Father Guido Does `Ring Thing'

The bride wore off-white. In fact, the whole wedding was a little off.

With a Bible in one hand and his trademark cigarette in the other, Father Guido Sarducci officiated yesterday when Debra Valencia and Sean Boltman did "the ring thing" in front of more than 500 people at Seattle Center's Bumbershoot.

"Dearly bedazzled, we are a-gathered here to celebrate on a-this day," intoned Sarducci, bedazzling himself in a black-velvet robe and red sequined boots.

"Marriage is a sacred union of two people. . . . You don't think of Romeo without Juliet, or Laurel without Hardy, or Star without Bucks."

Comedian Don Novello's alter ego, Sarducci was a regular on "Saturday Night Live" in the late 1970s as a chain-smoking man of the cloth poking fun at the pope. He wrote books, appeared in films, made albums, became a gossip columnist for the L'Osservatore Romano and even founded his own church: the People's Catholic Church, where every man and woman is a pope.

He resigned, though. Too much paperwork.

Now he's founded a new religious order, the Church du Soleil ("you know, like the circus") and waded through enough paperwork to be properly licensed in the state of Washington for pronouncing Valencia and Boltman and eight other couples husband and wife at Bumbershoot this weekend.

The couples were selected from hundreds who wrote to Bumbershoot organizers wanting to be married by the good father.

"It sounded fun. We didn't want a normal, traditional wedding," Valencia said.

Their "church" was a 20-foot-tall stage made in the style of a three-tiered wedding cake. Barbie doll heads and pink plastic flamingos topped a white picket fence surrounding the stage. The altar was covered by an umbrella and topped by a pink heart, a gold cupid and a silver, mirrored disco ball.

Sarducci exhorted the couples to follow the Commandments - not just the ones that start "Thou shalt not . . ." but also the ones that got lost after Moses smashed the tablets in a bad humor and could only remember the negative ones.

Those rules include No. 12 - always wait a half-hour after eating to go swimming - and Sarducci's personal favorite, No. 21: "When you use a Q-Tip, just a-go around the outside of the ear. You don't want to a-poke the canal."

With those words of wisdom, Sarducci reached behind a pink-and-purple shower curtain and produced a bottle of champagne. One glass for the bride, one for the groom and one swig straight out of the bottle for himself.

In addition to Valencia and Boltman, Sarducci married two other couples yesterday and is scheduled to marry three couples today and three more tomorrow at 1, 3 and 5 p.m. each day on the lawn outside the Bagley Wright Theatre.