Air kiss to start wedded bliss

The minister did a wedding in a bar not long ago, but this is her first fire truck.

It's also the first time the groom has to be instructed to air-kiss the bride. A real kiss would smudge his makeup.

By the time most people read this, Les Wedge and Susie Binder of Redford Township will presumably be husband and wife. Sometime between 8 and 8:30 a.m., at the fire station on Montcalm a few blocks west of Woodward, they are scheduled to join hands, gaze lovingly at one another, and admire their mutual big red noses.

Then Rev. Faith Fowler of Cass United Methodist Church will lead them through their vows, quickly, so they can hasten off to take part in America's Thanksgiving Parade -- Binder unrecognizable in a costume, and Wedge only marginally identifiable as Chiefy, a firefighting clown.

The happy couple are long-term guest performers with the Detroit Fire Fighter Clown Team, an august group whose members spend their workdays racing into burning buildings and their off time marching and doing skits in their boots, bunker pants, heavy jackets, helmets and greasepaint.

That's the wedding ensemble Wedge, 61, will see when he looks at his photos years from now, though his helmet will have the stylish addition of reindeer horns.

Binder, 54, will look a trifle more elegant, attired like her three bridesmaids in fire gear and a red cloak.

Fowler will be the one in a suit. "I told them I was glad to help," she says, "but not in a red nose and Bozo hair."

He aimed high, got no back

Wedge spent 28 years in the Redford Township fire department and retired eight months ago as chief. A lot of people still call him Chief or Chiefy, but not Binder.

"I call him my sweetie," she says.

Binder went to Redford Union High School with Wedge's sister Lydia and would occasionally accompany her to youth activities at the Wedges' Methodist church. ("Then," she says, "I'd have to go to confession.")

Years later, Binder became a youth leader at the same church. She and Wedge worked together on church projects, then some more on civic projects.

They discovered a mutual affection for aiming high -- "We'll take an idea and just enhance it bigger all the time," she says -- and it grew into a mutual affection, period. They never dated, exactly, but they were together all the time, and ultimately, he proposed.

She said no.

Lifetime honeymoon starts

Occupationally, Binder has done lots of things. She's currently with an employment foundation in Detroit. It's valuable work, but for heaven's sake, he was the chief.

"I thought he should have a professional wife," she says. He felt otherwise. Ultimately, he proved persuasive, and now he says they're "going to honeymoon for the rest of our lives."

"We're kids at heart," Binder says. "We go sledding and skating."

They often team up on fire safety presentations for children, and it struck her that the logical place to get married was aboard the Clown Team's 1958 Ford fire truck.

As Wedge points out, they're but humble guests when they perform with the Detroit crew, so it took some planning, hoop-jumping and cooperation to put the ceremony together.

Fowler says she wrote a liturgy that's a bit lighter than usual, because how deadly serious can you be when the 26 witnesses from the Clown Team are in full regalia and the rest of the guests are wearing bright red plastic honkers?

Her theme was the joy we're supposed to have in marriage, but sometimes forget to embrace. It was an easy call, she says -- as plain as the nose on everyone else's face.

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