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The Rev. Autrey Nassar, who has no particular church or denomination, goes to work in a landscape that Theodore Roosevelt called "a great solemn cathedral, far vaster and more beautiful than any built by the hand of man."
Nassar is a wedding preacher, and Yosemite is his turf. Ordained by the Universal Life Church in Modesto, he does 80 to 100 weddings a year in the park, often at the Yosemite Chapel (the oldest structure in the valley) or the Ahwahnee Hotel. Glacier Point, the Wawona Hotel and Bridalveil Fall are popular too.
Nassar, 61, isn't the only preacher performing weddings in the park. (Park officials issued permits for about 270 weddings last year, at $150 each.) But Nassar is the one you reach at www.yosemiteweddings.com. He's been doing weddings since 1975 but traces his current situation to 1985, when he and his wife, Donna, were living in Los Gatos, Calif. Nassar's brother decided to get married at the Yosemite Chapel and asked him to officiate.
It was a sunny day in February. Yosemite Falls was half-frozen and melting. As Nassar led the ceremony, chunks of waterfall ice dropped to the valley floor, booming like thunder. As soon as he got the chance, Autrey Nassar recalled, "I turned to my wife and said, 'Wouldn't it be great if we lived up here?'"
They moved in 1989. Nowadays, the couple lives on 18 acres in Mariposa at the western edge of the park, running the wedding business and the Carriage House at Twelve Oaks bed-and-breakfast.
One big change Nassar has seen lately: more elopements, which now amount to half of the marriages he performs. "They're the most fun," he said, because nobody's stressed-out over guests, logistics or enormous bills. (Nassar's fees for park weddings begin at $400.)
But there can be complications. Outside the Ahwahnee, Nassar often must work around deer or even bears (which are fond of a few nearby apple trees).
When I met Nassar at the Yosemite Valley panorama point known as Tunnel View, it was 9 a.m. and he'd just finished a ceremony. "This isn't a very common wedding site because there are usually many tourists here," he told me. "But - oh, my gosh, look at that."
Bride Cyrenea Piper stood posing for her wedding photographer, gently backlighted by the sun, the valley spread behind her. "Even I could take a good picture of that," Nassar said.
Moments later, Piper and her new husband, Josh, drove off, Nassar turned his attention to his next ceremony, and the day's first tour bus roared up.
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