“Everyone get a picture of that kiss all right?” she calls out. “Do they have to do it again?” Evans has been many things in her life, from a portrait photographer to an ashram owner to a struggling mother of five. But she may be best known as the lady who marries people in a pink- and purple-painted house.
By her own estimation, Evans, a New Age minister, has presided over thousands of weddings in this house in South Seattle, where plant vines are tacked to the ceiling and hot-pink chairs stand in for pews. Every decade, she dresses it up more — multicolored Christmas lights one year, a “kissing tree” the next. “God help me if I ever have to move,” she said. There was a time when this house off Myers Way South saw at least one marriage a day.
But there’s no rush anymore — not even for special days like New Year’s or Valentine’s Day. Just a steady trickle of couples every week. One day a smudge-pot ceremony for a Native American couple. Another, the wedding of a couple who met after the man placed a newspaper ad in Delhi. Performing is not always easy, what with old age catching up. But Evans pushes on. Social Security will only take her so far; every $50 wedding counts. Plus, it’s pretty clear society needs her services.
Who else provides a Las Vegas-style ceremony with so much romance? A pink wicker throne for the bride to sit in. A choice of several services, bound and laminated and color-coded for ease. If you want to travel, just say the word. Evans can marry you on a mountaintop; in a plane hangar; standing above a bathtub, bride and groom in bathing suits. She has been there, done that, before. She draws the line at naked; but for an extra fee, almost everything else goes.