You could say that Tony Jenzano and Stephanie Macomber have had a long engagement. They’ve been together since 2002, after they met while working on a movie set in Wilmington, NC. She was in the art department, and he was in camera and electrical. They knew pretty quickly that they would spend the rest of their lives together.
Stephanie says that she had browsed all the wedding catalogues, and even had a custom Italian wedding dress made. But, the dress is still in the box. In the decades of working on big movie projects that took them from Boston to Hawai’i to the Bahamas, they couldn’t find the means of putting together a wedding.
“It didn’t work out with our work schedules and financially. And then we just let it go,” said Tony. “We didn’t feel like we needed this to be together.”
Today, things have changed. Stephanie is no longer working in film (now, she paints), and Tony controls his schedule a little bit more (he has his own camera gear and employees). Stephanie recalls thinking, “look, can we just do this please? Can we just get married?”
The two thought to tie the knot quickly and cheaply. They’d go and get married by a magistrate on the courthouse steps. Tony got on the website to try and reserve a time, only to find that the courthouse was booked out.
But, the Orange County Detention Center had open slots.
“And we were just like, you know, what’s the big difference?” said Tony.
Stephanie added, “and they don’t even let you do it on the steps anymore.”
The county jail is a neat and sterile place, but it’s not exactly anybody’s dream wedding location. The couple called ahead to ask what it would be like, and the magistrate who picked up the phone laughed.
“It gave me the impression that he’d been asked that question before,” said Tony. “He was like, it’s not that bad… and we [Tony and Stephanie] were okay with quirky.”
Detention center weddings are often quirky for the magistrates who officiate them, too. Chief Magistrate of Orange County Jennifer Hodgson says that between all of the other duties that she is in charge of at the jail, she finds herself switching hats a lot. Indeed, her job description includes setting conditions of release, involuntary commitments, evictions, and more.
On any workday, magistrates have to deal with public safety concerns and criminal cases before they can attend to marriages.
“I may be in the middle of dealing with somebody… who’s not happy, not pleasant, and is very angry that they’re in front of me,” she said, “and then I have to go run outside, shake hands, put on a smiley face, put on a robe and deal with, you know, sometimes eight to ten people who are so happy their emotions are spilling out.”
Detention center weddings became popular during COVID, according to Hodgson. In a time when wedding celebrations were cancelled all around the world, people wanted a fast and cheap option.
The necessity of courthouse weddings is gone, but the appeal of it has stayed. “More and more people are going, ‘Hey, we're gonna get married at the magistrate's office, and then we're gonna have a party at our house, or we're gonna do another ceremony on a cruise ship, for example, next year,’” says Hodgson.
Tony and Stephanie cherished their wedding day. They both said that the ceremony was far more emotional and meaningful than they expected. Stephanie swapped out the Italian-made dress for a simple linen shift, which Tony matched with a white linen shirt. The vows which they’d waited 23 years to say had them both in tears. They kept with old traditions like something borrowed and something blue. Tony’s mother and brother came as witnesses, and celebrated with the newlyweds over lunch. They say that they will throw themselves a party within the year, but for now this was the perfect celebration.
