LOVE STORIES
Vow was shaky, but bond is solid

By Tanya Bricking Leach
Advertiser Staff Writer

Greg Smith was unnerved when his bride, Jacqui, hesitated in saying her vows, but it was only because she was overcome with emotion. Greg Smith

The bride, Jacqui Richardson, was concentrating on emphasizing certain words, such as "husband."

But when she got to: "I take you, Greg, to be my husband," her emotions were getting the better of her.

"Oh my God," she blurted out, "I can't do this."

What she meant was she didn't want to cry. But the small audience, including the officiant, the Rev. Kermit Rydell, and her husband-to-be, Greg Smith, took it literally.

"I'm like, 'What do you mean, you can't?' " Smith recalls thinking. "The minister looked at her and then looked at me, like, 'Should I keep going?' "

He did, and they did their "I dos."

Richardson, 32, an Internet cafe manager, and Smith, 33, a Navy submarine sonar instructor, wed Feb. 14, barefoot on the beach. The bride wore a casual floral dress and arranged her own bouquet of mixed flowers. The groom wore aloha attire, and so did their fussy 10-month-old son, Ethan, who was among the onlookers. The bride is now Mrs. Jacqui Smith. They live in Salt Lake.

The couple's courtship was as nontraditional as their wedding. He proposed via instant message over the Internet.

The backstory is that they were both coming out of failed first marriages, and they began chatting online while Greg was in Hawai'i and Jacqui was in California. Soon, Jacqui came to Hawai'i for a visit and decided to stay.

She and Greg would go on dates at Bellows Beach, where they loved to look for sea turtles. So it was appropriate that they found wedding bands with sea turtles on them.

They could have married before their son's birth, but as Jacqui says, "We put the cart before the horse, but Ethan wasn't the reason we got married." She says it was for love, and their timing proved the point that they wanted to marry for the right reasons.

"I was just coming out of a 10-year marriage, and she was the opposite in all the right ways," Greg said. "I found out that there's a big difference between loving somebody and liking somebody. You can love somebody and not like them anymore. With Jacqui, I love her and I like her. We get along well together. We don't really get on each other's nerves a whole lot."

Except, he says, when he plays games on the computer for too long. He knows that bothers her, so he's working on that.

Jacqui says he's just "normal," and his easy-going style came along just when she needed it.

She said she fell in love with his Arkansas charm and his sense of humor, even though she was the one who brought comic relief to their wedding.

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Tanya Bricking Leach writes about relationships for The Advertiser. Reach her at tbricking@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8026.