TRENTON, Maine — You might be a redneck if your camouflage bridal veil is decorated with spent shotgun shells.
You might be a redneck if your wedding guests dip punch out of a toilet bowl punch bowl.
You might be a redneck if hunter orange was the theme for your wedding.
Those aren’t bad “might be a redneck” jokes. They were all part of the redneck wedding Saturday on the shores of Mount Desert Narrows at the Narrows Too Camping Resort where Missy Jean Larrabee and Robbie James Emery got officially hitched.
It was a dream wedding for the bride.
“I wanted a camouflage theme,” Missy Jean said during the reception. “I’m a hunter, so’s my family. I love Larry the Cable Guy. I love redneck.”
The couple set out to do something different, according to Robbie James.
“It was a lot of fun,” he said. “We wanted to do something not traditional; something not everybody does.”
Well, y’all, they pulled that off all right.
There were no toothless banjo pickers playing “Dueling Banjos,” and Daisy, Uncle Jesse and the Duke boys were missing, but everyone else got into the spirit. Many of the guests seemed to step off the pages of a Cabela’s catalog, and the clearing overlooking the ocean and the hills of MDI was filled with camouflage, flannel and hunter orange.
The bride arrived, of course, in the back of a pickup truck, attended by the mother of the bride, Bonnie Campbell, who wore bright red lipstick and a floor-length, flannel nightgown.
“I borried this,” she grinned, playing the part. “But it was brand-new.”
The bride wore a simple, elegant white gown with delicate embroidery along the bodice and thin spaghetti straps, accented with a full camouflage train, offset by a complementary camouflage veil that was highlighted with spent shotgun shells.
“I really wanted a full camouflage dress, but we couldn’t find one,” she said. “So we decided to go with just the accessories.”
The bride’s mother made the veil and the train. According to Campbell, the bride’s garter mirrored the outer accouterments, with the more delicate, .22-caliber casings from the House of Remington.
She was attended by her two sons, Harry and David Larrabee, 13 and 11 respectively, both decked out in hunting shirts and camo caps.
Her bouquet was a colorful melange of Tootsie Roll Pops.
The groom wore jeans, a hunting shirt, camouflage cap and sneakers.
The ceremony was brief. The “preacher,” notary public Stu Marckoon, a longtime friend of the couple’s, officiated — really officiated — wearing a striped referee shirt under his obligatory camouflage jacket. He blew a whistle to pronounce them hitched.
During their vows, the groom promised not to cheat or lie or yell when supper’s not ready, to remember her birthday, their anniversary (within a few days) and to come home when he’s supposed to; to let her have the remote once in a while, put the seat down and tell her she looks pretty even when her hair’s not dry.
Missy Jean promised to let him draft his fantasy football and baseball teams, to take the boys to a Sox game, not to get too whiny more than once a month and to accept that PBR means professional bull riding or Pabst Blue Ribbon and not to do one without the other.
As Missy Jean placed the ring on Robbie’s finger she reminded him that “if some young thing sets her eyes on you, you flash it and tell her to skedaddle.”
In a slight mix-up — Robbie James produced a large, bright red lollipop ring and, as he placed it on her finger, told her that “if I screw up big time, it’s really going to hurt when you rap me upside the head with it.”
(Robbie had the real ring all the time and immediately placed it on her finger.)
The reception hall was filled with friends. For their first toast as a married couple, Missy Jean and Robbie James clinked — not Champagne glasses — but finely engraved “his” and “hers” blue Mason jars.
The cake was decorated in true redneck style with a medley of Little Debbie snack cakes, and the punch really was served from a toilet bowl artfully converted into a punch bowl.
Family members were not surprised by the camouflage theme of the wedding.
“I love it,” said mother of the bride Campbell. “And she loves it, she’s so happy. She’s not a normal child. Her dad says that she’s his only boy.”
The bride’s sister, Ashley Campbell, just shook her head when asked if the theme wedding surprised her.
“No,” she said. “She really is a redneck at heart.”