The Sturgis Hitchin Post

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For Weddings & Vow Renewals
This is fantastic deal! Check around and compare and you'll see we have thought of everything for you at a very reasonable price
making your experience stress free!

Dressing Room for the bride and groom (air conditioned)

Meet with your wedding Officiant to 'plan' the wedding on site

A lovely ceremony room with flowers, candles and stained glass

Custom ceremony vows and readings - religious, spiritual, civil, or your own vows

Enjoy a Simple Elegant Ceremony
Take advantage of our cool, quiet, gorgeous ceremony room. Let us write your own special vows. Take home a custom biker-style marriage certificate. Ride away, your veil and flowers flowing in the wind!

Visit any South Dakota Courthouse within 20 days of your wedding

The bride and groom must present United States issued identification, such as a driver's license or passport.

There are no required blood tests or waiting period.

If you are divorced or widowed/widower, there are no required documentations.

Check out what the Sioux Falls Examiner has to say about us!

For just $200 get Married or Renew your Vows in Style !

Enjoy our lovely ceremony room with flowers, candles, beautiful music and stained glass

Have a very special and touching custom ceremony with vows and readings - religious, spiritual, civil, or your own words

Schedule your wedding today with a $75 deposit. - note : all off-site weddings require a credit card $75 deposit. Please give us a 24 hours email cancellation notice, or you will lose your deposit and we will charge you the full price of the wedding. We are very busy, and can not travel to no-show weddings.

Call (605) 561-1111 or email Joan to schedule your wedding.

Meet Craig and Jodie from Australia, our "Tell Us Your Story Contest"

Simple and Elegant Weddings and Renewal of Vows!

Commemerate in Style in a gorgeous ceremony room right here on Main Street in Downtown Sturgis.

I'm a sucker for weddings. I mean, I love weddings and I always cry. I cried when Tiny Tim married Miss Vicki on TV in 1969, and I've blubbered at every ceremony since.

So when I found out that dozens of couples get married at the rally each year, I couldn't wait to crash, ahem, attend one. I quickly learned from one of Sturgis' non-denominational ministers, Joan Pillen, that those 50+ are more likely to tie the knot than kids during the rally. The town has no waiting period; same-day marriages are legal.

Royce Pyles, 61, and Robin Murphy, 60, from Beaver, Utah, tied the knot on Thursday, Aug. 7, a date that looked to be lucky for them since this was his fifth and her second wedding. They summed up their attitude about marrying this way: "It's not nececssary, but why not?" On this, their fourth trip to Sturgis, they spontaneously decided to go for it.

"Love's just like it was when we were young," Robin said. "I've had a good life almost all the time." The secret, she said (her first marriage lasted 35 years), is to "talk a lot, let them know what's going on."

"A lot of couples don't listen," said Joan, who's officiated for about 150 couples at the Rally over the last three years. "It's just, 'yeah, yeah, let's get this over with,'" she observed. "The second time around, couples take it more seriously."

While the date 08/08/08 is pretty memorable, Rick Bell, 54, from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, announced that he'd always remember his anniversary because it's bike week. His bride Peggy, 57, meanwhile, got herself a wedding bouquet--a tattoo of flowers on her back. "They don't die and you don't have to water them," she said.

This is a couple who came down in a car ("cage" in biker lingo), because he's currently on disability from his job as a transit operator and can't ride a bike. But Sturgis it had to be.

Is love as good in your 50s? "Love is better at our age," said Peggy emphatically.

Between ceremonies, Joan related her most memorable ceremony. A man came into the optical store that the Hitchin' Post is the rest of the year. His bike had slid out from under him, he ended up with road rash to the bone and worse (you don't want to know), and he needed to replace his glasses. He happened to mention that the accident had put the kibosh on his and his girlfriend's plans to wed. "You've walked into the right place," Joan told him, and married them, bandaged bride, cake, and all (and small-town South Dakota at its best, didn't dream of charging him).

Some people find marrying nerve-wracking, while some find getting on a motorcycle a lot scarier. That latter would be me. But I had to do it at least once this week. So when my cousin Dave, a stand-up guy who teaches motorcycle design at an automotive college, hauled into town, I climbed on.

Now I'm a person who spent most of my twenties hitchhiking around the country, more often than not by myself. I've climbed the cable of the Brooklyn Bridge, and I like to drive (cars!) very, very fast. I moved to New York City by myself with a hundred bucks in my pocket.

So I'm not exactly a scaredy-cat. (Or was I just a little crazier then?)

I sat on Dave's Harley-Davidson Fatboy pondering why some of us love biking, and a lot more of us stare at the pavement so near to our tender, delicate skin and bones and imagine skidding and scraping and...suddenly I realize I can see the speedometer, and we're going 80 miles an hour.

And then we're there, and it wasn't so bad. I even had a second or two when I didn't think about crashing and crunching and...

My cousin's girlfriend, Jackie, said she'd been nervous, too, until she learned more about bikes. For instance, they don't simply fall over, and it's less scary when you're the one in control.

So maybe it's driving skills, understanding the physics, or those fraternal twins--fear and excitement--that draw some of us to biking. Or is risk-taking at our age--in part a willingness to be vulnerable--something like marriage in midlife?

Will I ride again? I'm on my first marriage and expect it to be my last. I suspect I'll say the same thing about biking. But I'm in Sturgis for two more days...

visit the link at http://www.aarp.org/leisure/activities/sturgis/articles/Sturgis_Day5.html

Thank you all for such wonderful memories of this magical year!

Call now - 605 561-1111 - to schedule your wedding!

Call us at 605 561-1111 to schedule your wedding!

Filming for a French Documentary on what happens in Sturgis!