Sometimes Facebook is fantastic. Like times when you find out your friends Tina and Don got married without telling anyone way out in Witless Bay, Nfld.
By way of context, Don refused to hire me at the Ottawa Citizen, while Tina quickly hired me at the Kingston Whig-Standard. I’m intensely and forever grateful about both of those decisions.
This marriage business makes for a really easy entry, too, because all I have to do is cut and paste the official news release from Facebook.
NEWS FLASH: URGENT, FOR IMMEDIATE PUBLICATION
Butler, Spencer wed in secret ceremony in Newfoundland
WITLESS BAY, NFLD. – Two Ottawa-based writers who vowed they’d never wed have tied the knot in this oddly named community in Newfoundland, Nuptial News Agency has learned.Donald Sheppard Butler and Christina L. Spencer exchanged rings on July 12 at approximately 11 a.m. in an oceanfront ceremony that took about 10 minutes. Under sunny skies at the edge of the sea, they reportedly spoke a few words to each other as a marriage commissioner officiated and a dog called Annie watched. They then went whale-watching.
The longtime lovers had shared accommodation since 1985, sources said.
The so-called secret marriage, now officially outed by NNA, comes just after the couple publicly marked 25 years of living in sin.
Although both refused comment after the exchange of rings, Butler brusquely allowed as how two-and-a-half decades was enough time to determine whether the couple’s commitment would endure.
“I guess so,” he replied in answer to NNA’s questions on the subject. Spencer was too busy being “screeched in” to respond in anything like English when assailed by a media scrum. “I’m entitled to my entitlements,” was all she mumbled.
Those close to the couple warned the snap wedding could be a hoax. “Most of us believe they’ve been secretly married since their first trip to India, or was that Africa?” a sibling of Spencer explained.
But witnesses said Butler, at least, was wearing a ring in Nfld., something he had not been doing previously. It is rumoured, however, that he refused his new wife’s request to get a tattoo.
Details of the wedding plan are still sketchy. But NNA was told by high-ranking officials who refused to be named that the wedding licence was acquired in St. Jhns’ from a generously proportioned wedding licence issuer at her home, while her husband cooked a Jiggs dinner and two pugs watched hungrily. There had been earlier confusion about the address of the licence issuer, resulting in the couple ringing the doorbell of a home likely occupied by a biker, where they also met a dog named “Diesel.”
It is believed the couple plans to honeymoon in Ottawa, Kingston, Scarborough, Waterloo, Twillingate or Chipman, New Brunswick.
-30-
The Human Facebook Project 
lol. that was terrific and endearing. i never get tired of reading your posts! i’m telling you, its quickly become my favorite blog. thank you for these stories steve. 🙂 thank you so much.