DEL MAR: Wedding bells at the boat show

By RENEE HAINES - For the North County Times | Saturday, March 29, 2008 12:19 AM PDT ∞

This is a fishing story that ends with catching a bride at a boat show.

Some 40 years ago, two youngsters became friends in junior high school in the San Fernando Valley. They didn’t date each other; they dated each other’s friends. What they had in common was fishing.

In 2007, Kim Kirshbaum still was living in the Valley, and Bonnie Jean, who had just moved back after living for years in Arizona, decided to go fishing for her old school friend the 21st century way: She Googled Kirshbaum. They got together in January, “and he hasn’t left my side since,” Jean said.

“When I met her, the train whistles and magnets went off,” Kirshbaum, 57, said. “She was pretty back then, and she’s pretty now, and I’m pretty happy.”

He proposed in February, and Jean, 54, said yes. On Friday, they wed at the Del Mar Fairgrounds on a tuna tower decorated with paper wedding bells atop his new 25-foot Bahia sportfishing boat parked at the Fred Hall Fishing Tackle and Boat Show.

She was barefoot, and he wore sandals. Boat show models became stand-in bridesmaids. Instead of rice, they threw rubber bait worms. The icing on the fish-shaped cake stated: “Congratulations. Great Catch.”

Their pictures were taken with their daughters and her grandson beneath six crossed fishing gaffs before an impromptu crowd on the trade show floor.

“They had debated using ‘captain’ and ‘first mate’ for the ceremony, but the bride wasn’t too thrilled with that,” said the Rev. Keith Banwart of St. Matthew’s Church in Glendale. It was the first wedding he had officiated on a boat, and he wore a Hawaiian shirt “instead of my clergy blacks.”

This is not the first wedding at the popular boat show, now in its 34th year at Del Mar. Two weddings were held in the early 1990s, one at Del Mar and one at the annual Long Beach show, said Bart Hall, the show’s producer and managing partner.

One of Friday’s stand-in bridesmaids, Crystal Mees, 29, of Orange, recently landed a catch. “I met my fiance at this boat show, and we’re getting married in 35 days,” she said, then nodded toward the trade floor. “There are some single men out there.”

Hall just smiled at the idea of his annual event becoming a "Love Boat" show.

“This is a very broad demographic. They like fishing, boating, travel. It’s a lot of people coming together and bumping into each other who share something in common,” he said.

“There’s a certain amount of passion in the sport of fishing, and they’re here to celebrate that,” Hall said. “They meet. They say, ‘Let’s get married.’ ”

Newlyweds Kirshbaum and Jean, after posing for rounds of photographs, said they would take a honeymoon cruise and then go fishing.