ShareThisThe first time Laura Strain met Allan Tortorice, she was afraid he was going to sue her. She had, after all, just banged into the man and spilled hot coffee all over him.
Instead, they married on Saturday at the scene of that caffeine crash: a Starbucks.
Rose Tortorice, the mother of the groom, said of the couple's exchanging vows in the place where they met: "It's kind of romantic. And then on Valentine's Day? My gosh."
Laura and Allan met last March 8. Laura had never been in a Starbucks but decided to stop by at the encouragement of her sister, who had been trying to get her to treat herself more often. Laura, now 47, walked inside and chatted up the baristas for a coffee recommendation.
Settling on a tall skinny vanilla latte, she turned away from the counter and smacked directly into the well-dressed Allan, leaving his shirt covered in coffee. At first, Allan was irritated. But, he recalled, "I looked at her, and I'm like, 'Maybe this isn't all bad.' "
Laura immediately apologized, grabbed napkins to try and clean him up and offered to pay for dry cleaning.
Allan, now 54, would have none of it. He insisted that he replace her coffee. So Laura took a seat, not knowing what to expect.
"Oh, dear," she remembered thinking as he walked toward her with the replacement. "I'm really in trouble now."
But they were headed for courting -- not court.
As it turns out, they had some things in common. Allan, who is not a coffee drinker, had stopped by for a sweet roll. He had never been inside a Starbucks, either. More important, they talked about their children and the fact that they both had recently divorced after long marriages.
They spoke for 30 minutes or so. Allan, a systems engineer for IBM, gave Laura his business card. Laura, an insurance agent, handed him her phone number.
They had their first date the next weekend.
After deciding to get married, the couple thought about having their wedding aboard a cruise ship, but that turned into an organizational hassle.
"Why not Starbucks?" they thought, and the coffee company was all for it.
They found a minister on the Internet and invited about 30 people. They were married beneath a rented trellis strewn with flowers and placed in front of some coffee cup art hanging on the wall.
Tucked into a corner, musicians played acoustic guitar and mandolin, adding an extra touch of romance to the afternoon. The bride wore a red-and-white Valentine-themed dress, and the groom a dark suit. The 12-minute ceremony featured vows and prayers in roughly the traditional sequence, with the whirring of coffee machines enhancing the ambience.
A few people who had just stopped by for coffee decided to stay for the ceremony, and some snapped pictures with their camera phones.
"Look at that dress! Isn't she cute?" said Tere Murphy of Angier, who was out furniture shopping with her husband, Jim.
Instead of an open bar, invited guests were given tickets to exchange for coffees.
Darlene Librizzi, the bride's sister, traveled from Florida for the ceremony. She remembers what she thought when her sister told her that she wanted to get married in a Starbucks.
"I think I said, 'Are you out of your mind?' " But the more she thought about it, the more the wedding location seemed just like her sister: original.
After the ceremony, when many of the guests had gone and the TV cameramen had packed up, Laura walked to the counter to place her order for (of course) a tall skinny vanilla latte.
Laura nodded toward Allan, who was standing across the room.
"I figure," she said, laughing, "he's at a safe distance."
E-mail Matt Ehlers at matt.ehlers(at)newsobserver.com.
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
Must credit The News & Observer of Raleigh, N.C.
Caffeine collision?
Only people completely lacking imagination use "caffeine" as a synonym for coffee.