Local wedding coordinator is selective about her brides

 PORTSMOUTH

On Saturday, Matina McFarland slipped on an elegant white gown, fitted a tiara into her dark hair and walked into a princess tale-come-true: her wedding day.

It was a day that was months in the making, by  McFarland and by her lady-in-waiting – Jane Hargraves, the wedding coordinator at Calvary Evangelical Baptist Church.

Few churches have coordinators like Hargraves; she’s an unpaid adviser to people getting married at Calvary, and she considers her job a ministry of help.

Confident, composed and ladylike, Hargraves became Calvary’s wedding coordinator after a 32-year career as a Portsmouth teacher and school administrator.

At the minimum, she holds brides to the Calvary wedding guidelines she reviewed with McFarland one afternoon last June.

The rules include mandatory premarital counseling by the pastor. No alcohol or tobacco is allowed on the premises – “some people want to start their celebration early,” Hargraves said dryly. Secular music, revealing skirts and plunging necklines are forbidden.

“A lot of times, they say, 'Let me get back with you,’ and I never hear from them,” Hargraves said of would-be clients.

The rules didn’t trouble McFarland, 35, who is Calvary’s youth director. Her father, the Rev. Allen R. McFarland, is Calvary’s senior pastor.

Rather, she was eager for Hargraves’ seasoned advice on everything from florists and wedding cakes, to the color and paper stock for invitations.

“She’s done every person’s wedding in my family,” including her three younger sisters, McFarland said.

Done with the rule book that June day, Hargraves and McFarland walked the church sanctuary where the wedding would be held.

Hargraves, in a palm-patterned blouse and linen pants, paced out the bridal party’s walk.

“Your ring bearer, your little flower girls, they’ll just fall in place,” she said.

“That sounds good to me,”  McFarland said. “I’m just trying to keep myself calm. I’ve got a great coordinator who will keep me in line.”

 

 

Hargraves, who grew up in Accomac County, was a Norfolk State University student when she married Robert Hargraves in 1969.

Ironically, it was a low-key wedding. The ceremony was held at home with family members, cake and punch.

“We didn’t have anything as elaborate as I do for other women . At the time, it was not just that important to me.”

Years later, Hargraves began helping a friend who organized weddings and found she had a talent for the task.

After organizing as many as 25 weddings, she is selective about the brides she works with. She backs away from weddings where the bride’s mother, not the bride, is the decision­maker.

She invests herself in brides who ask for advice but have ideas of their own.

“Every girl dreams of that special wedding, and they know what they want, so I don’t have a problem with that . I’m a resource for them.”

Throughout the summer, McFarland and Hargraves talked or met weekly, becoming confidantes, sharing trust.

 “I say, 'What’s your dream? Let’s work for your dream,’” Hargraves said of McFarland. “Ask her – she has one.”

 

 

McFarland shared her wedding fantasies one August morning at Bojangles  after Hargraves prayed a silent grace over a breakfast biscuit.

“I consider myself a true romanticist – anything with Cinderella, princesses, everything. I’m girlie-girlie,” McFarland said. Her wedding “ is going to be a Hollywood fairy tale.”

To make it happen, bride and planner had combed boutiques for a  dress, a dogged fashion show with McFarland trying on one frock after another.

“We knew she didn’t like them, but she was like, 'I’m doing this for Mom and Miss Hargraves,’ ” Hargraves laughed. They finally found the right gown in Richmond.

“It’s a dress fit for a princess,” McFarland said, describing an A-line design, sleeveless and tied behind the neck, with pearls and rhinestones in white fabric and a small train.

“I’m going to look like a Cinderella, a chocolate Cinderella!”

The dream was pulling together in other ways. Decisions had been made on a cake, tuxes, rings, a waterside banquet hall at Langley Air Force Base and a florist.

McFarland, an admitted sucker for things purple, also chose Victorian Lilac – purple “with a shimmer,” she said – for bridesmaids’ dresses and the wedding’s color theme.

“I wanted it to represent me and wanted it to have some elegance – but not so much that I couldn’t relax and be myself,” she said of the wedding day.

Even before the Big Day, she was keeping calm, thanks to prayer and trust that Hargraves’ Christian faith would see them through any emergency.

“As long as she’s connected to God, I’m fine,” McFarland said. “A person who knows God knows where that peace comes from and is going to be calm and handle the situations with strength and character.”

Hargraves agreed.

“If there is a crisis, I’ll handle it because that’s my responsibility . I pride myself on being able to disarm situations.”

 

 

By a late September Saturday, the wedding was just weeks away. The invitations with violet borders, painstakingly selected from Paperwhyte, a High Street gift and station ery store, had been sent.

Now McFarland and her fiance sat at the center of a swirling bridal shower lunch given by the kids and mothers in McFarland’s youth ministry. On her head, a faux platinum tiara sparkled. “BRIDE,” it said.

Away from the din in the church social hall, the bride’s mother, Doris McFarland, shared what she’d learned from each daughter’s wedding.

“It’s not my wedding, and most mothers don’t realize that,” she said in the social hall kitchen.

So Doris has helped Matina plan, a lot, but she’s let her daughter, and Hargraves, do a lot as well.

“The times I was not able to be there, Jane stood in my stead,” Doris McFarland said. “I trust her because she’s been the event planner for all of my daughters.”

In the hall, testimonials followed the fried-chicken lunch.

“I just want to say, congratulations. You mean a lot to the church and the children,” said 10-year-old Destiny Cates, one of several  young well-wishers who stepped forward.

Matina McFarland, in a purple top and black slacks, and the groom-to-be, in a white shirt and gray pants, locked hands on a knife and cut a sheet cake – decorated, of course, with Cinderella and Disney princesses. There were  gifts of scented candles, towels, a crystal bowl.

“Ooh, it’s beautiful,” Hargraves said as McFarland unwrapped a fuchsia, kid-decorated picture frame.

Though she’d spent the afternoon as alert to trouble as a restaurant maitre d’, Hargraves actually hadn’t planned the shower, but there was plenty yet for her to do, including a final program for the wedding reception and a guest list for the Langley security gate.

“I’ll be with the bridal party coordinating right up until the end of the reception” on the wedding day.  I just want to make sure everything is going smoothly.”

Knowing that Hargraves was covering her back helped settle pre-wedding butterflies, McFarland said between bites of cake.

“I’m not supposed to worry about things. I let her handle it.”

She hoped  her guests would not only enjoy her wedding-day dreams but appreciate the higher power that brought together two people – bride and groom, that is, not bride and coordinator.

“I think people will walk away saying how beautiful it is, but I’d hope for them to say, 'Look what God did.’”

 

Steven G. Vegh, (757) 446-2417,

steven.vegh@pilotonline.com