A baseball wedding

CEDAR RAPIDS - Brice Maren and Emily White love each other. They love baseball.

So getting married at the ballpark felt natural.

'We have always loved baseball,” said White, after tying the knot at Veterans Memorial Stadium minutes before the Cedar Rapids Kernels and Burlington Bees played their Midwest League game.

Burlington beat the home team, 7-6, but that couldn't dampen what was one great day for the Iowa City couple. Their greatest.

'Our first vacation together was to the World Baseball Classic,” White said. 'We went to the Hall of Fame and saw a bunch of stuff. Right before he proposed, we went to a game. It was so much fun, we thought, ‘Why not do this?'”

Their wedding wasn't the first at Memorial Stadium, but it was the first in front of a full crowd. The Kernels labeled it 'Wedding Crashers Night,” in honor of the hit comedy movie.

When Maren, 42, and White, 37, asked to book the ballpark for their wedding, the Kernels asked them if they minded if the club promoted it.

'It was kind of crazy, but it was so cool,” White said. 'How could we say no?”

The wedding party walked out from the tunnel behind home plate, with family members and friends either sitting on chairs or standing around the dirt batter's circle. The entire crowd stood as White entered to 'Here Comes The Bride.”

After the ceremony, the newlyweds exited the field through two lines of Kernels players holding bats skyward. The Kernels gave them a wedding present (jerseys with ‘Bride' and ‘Groom' on the back) and Maren threw out one of the game's official first pitches.

Quite a spectacle.

'The Kernels have been so wonderful to us. They really have,” Maren said. 'We like minor league games more than major league games because you feel so much closer to the players and the game. I love the atmosphere of minor league baseball. We come up here regularly.”

It wasn't a good game for Cedar Rapids (26-30), which was less than sharp defensively, to say the least. Starting pitcher Josue Montanez (1-3) didn't allow an earned run in four innings, but four unearned ones handed him the loss.

Bryan Haar has been solid at third base, but he made a pair of errors (one throwing, one fielding) in a three-run Burlington first. Shortstop Engelb Vielma's throwing error opened the door to an unearned Bees run in the fourth.

Cedar Rapids didn't go down easily, scoring four times in the eighth, including a bases-loaded triple from Haar. Tying runs Jason Kanzler was stranded at second in the eighth and Tanner Vavra at first in the ninth.

The teams play the second game of their three-game series Sunday afternoon at 2:05. There are no pregame weddings planned.

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