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So how does a nice Jewish girl from Tucson hook up with a guy from New Jersey named Mark Kelly?
Well, if the girl is Gabrielle Giffords and the guy routinely leaves Earth courtesy of NASA, you meet in China four years ago on an international leadership conference. Then you get together a year later in Arizona for the same conference, this one organized by that girl from the golden west.
“I arranged a cattle drive, riding and roping, a trip to the Grand Canyon,” said the congresswoman from Arizona’s Eighth District.
The astronaut was smitten.
  
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“Our first date was at the state prison in Florence,” he recounted with a deadpan expression. “I learned she was going to be on the tour, and I said, ‘OK, I’m there.’ ”
Thus began a romance that blossomed between his home in Houston, the International Space Station, and her homes in Tucson and Washington, D.C.
Not exactly your everyday commute.
And Saturday at 6 p.m., near sunset, before a crowd of 300 family members, friends, politicians and party-goers, Giffords and Kelly were married at the Agua Linda Farm in Amado, some 35 miles south of Tucson.
People came from all parts of the United States, and from Mexico, the United Kingdom and Israel.
Any show of partisanship was likely directed toward the happiness of the bride and groom.
“I’m an independent,” Kelly said in a pre-wedding interview.
Well, perhaps not so much any more.
What could have been a high-profile, glitzy event attracting the attention of paparazzi was anything but.
It’s not the couple’s style.
Two weeks before they wed, wearing jeans and drinking from plastic water bottles, Giffords and Kelly sat down at a rickety picnic table at the Agua Linda Farm, just yards from where their marriage ceremony would take place and spoke to three local reporters.
“This community raised me,” Giffords said with emotion, “so you’re the people I want to talk to about my wedding.”
In fact, the traditional Jewish ceremony was held outdoors with a Santa Rita mountainscape backdrop; the new moon made for the darkest of Arizona skies under which to hold the reception.
Think American steak and potatoes, flanked by traditional Mexican food. Think mariachi music and a lady making fresh tortillas.
“The Giffords all speak Spanish and are highly respectful of Mexican culture,” said family friend and wedding planner Suzy Gershman, whose client-bride was in Iraq the weekend before the nuptials. “This will blow the minds of the people from back east.”
Upon returning from Iraq, Giffords joked on Wednesday with a Herald/Review reporter saying, “No, I didn’t want to have a long-distance wedding.”
It’s not easy being green
The third-generation Arizonan and congresswoman-daughter of Spencer and Gloria Giffords had a mind of her own when it came to getting married.
She and Kelly, who attended her swearing-in as a freshman member of the House of Representatives, were determined to leave a soft environmental footprint in the wake of their exchange of vows.
“They thought I was crazy,” said Giffords when she first went shopping for a wedding dress expecting to spend $500, maybe $750. “They said there was nothing. But since I truly believe in recycling and reusing, Suzy’s daughter is letting me wear her dress.”
Gershman’s daughter loaned Giffords her ivory silk, spaghetti strap, simple floor-length Vera Wang wedding gown, and Giffords will return it — presumably after a trip to the cleaners — once the ceremonial photos are taken and the dancing is over.
The couple also is using biodegradable cups and plates made from sugar cane and cornstarch, and biodegradable napkins, paper towels and even trash bags at as many of the wedding festivities as possible. They enjoyed a rehearsal dinner at a private home Friday night and will be hosted at a brunch today.
“They also gently suggested that guests carpool to the wedding if possible and sent a list of nearby accommodations to the out-of-towners,” Gershman said.
All workers at the wedding will be checked for proper documentation of their legal status in the country.
The environmentally sensitive Agua Linda Farm is a working spread of 63 acres in the Santa Cruz River Valley, raising produce and cattle without pesticides, herbicides and hormones. The day of the interview, Kelly’s mother Patricia was in town as were his daughters from a previous marriage, Claudia, 12, and Claire, 10. The girls easily made friends among the families that roamed the farm’s annual Fall Festival and came by to show off a duck that was decidedly kid-friendly.
“The girls are smart, beautiful, loving and fun,” Giffords said. “We have a good relationship and I’m so enjoying watching them grow up.”
She added that Claudia is the outgoing and courageous one with a special bond to her dad. Then, with a teasing look at Kelly, commented that Claire “has more good sense.”
Other aspects of the union included wedding invitations with the image of a Spanish-inspired painting showing a hapless suitor pledging love to his sweetheart as her father emerges from the hacienda, gun in hand.
Wedding planner Gershman surprised the newlyweds with a “Day of the Dead” cake-topper, and mom Gloria painted the ketubah, the Jewish wedding contract that is signed prior to the ceremony and was framed and on display for the reception.
Attending the bride were her sister Melissa, state Rep. Linda Lopez, former state Sen. Elaine Richardson, Cathy Nichols, daughter of the late state senator Andy Nichols, and her good friend Raoul Erickson — a bridesman, so to speak.
Not to be outdone, Kelly was attended by Julie Payette, a NASA scientist, along with his identical twin brother and also-an-astronaut, Scott. Other groomsmen included astronauts Piers Sellers and Mike Fossum, and commercial pilot Mark Baden.
Claudia and Claire were junior bridesmaids, and all the women wore burgundy dresses, each allowed to select a design of their choice.
Officiating was rabbi Stephanie Aaron of Tucson’s Congregation Chaverim, Giffords’ home synagogue.
Prior to their official pronouncement as “husband and wife,” Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor during the Clinton administration, offered a personal blessing to the couple.
Reich is currently a professor of public policy at the University of California in Berkeley and has been a longtime mentor and friend to Giffords.
“This has been such a hands-on, family-oriented wedding,” Gershman said. “It’s not formal. It’s not informal. It’s all about joining these two families.”
Just the two of them
There’s no honeymoon planned at the moment. Navy Cmdr. Kelly will be launched into space in April on STS-124, his third mission aboard the shuttle and she’ll be there for blast-off.
“We’ll be up for 13 to 15 days,” he said, “delivering the Japanese experiment module to the space station, installing part of the new lab.”
And, yes, she worries.
“But they train and train and train,” Giffords said emphatically. “I’m very proud of him.”
When the right stuff meets and marries a prototypical woman of the 21st century, does that say anything about the state of modern male-female relationships?
They don’t know.
Kelly jerked his thumb to point at Gabrielle.
“Her job is more demanding. I thought at one time I might want to go into politics. Until I saw how hard she works. I had no idea how hard it is. She doesn’t stop from the minute she gets up,” he said. “I have more appreciation for all the members of Congress.”
His representative in Texas is Ron Paul.
“We don’t compete with each other,” Giffords said. “We have a lot of respect for each other’s work.”
Asked what he likes best about his bride, Kelly didn’t hesitate.
“Her sense of humor. It’s very similar to mine. I don’t mean to say that’s a good thing. It’s just similar.”
On a few “inside” domestic notes, she says he is not amused when in their transient life she forgets her razor and has to use his, and that he is a far better airplane pilot than automobile driver.
He does not disagree.
The woman who votes on behalf of Southern Arizona exuded conviction and devotion as she leaned against her astronaut-fiance and regarded him with the fullness of her mind and heart.
“This was the biggest decision of my life. I love him so much,” she said.
HERALD/REVIEW reporter Cindy Skalsky can be reached at 515-4611 or by e-mail at cindy.skalsky@svherald.com.
Nyle Schafhauser wrote on Mar 19, 2008 11:10 AM:
All the best, Nyle "