ASHEVILLE – Christie Glenn, the bride, wore gauzy, costume-store wings down the aisle, a white leather jacket over a floor-length dress. The wedding was held in the church’s sanctuary, but a broken boiler meant the room was frigid, and the few attendees were bundled in coats and hats.
At the altar rail, officiant Melanie Robertson coached Christie through a few deep breaths. Robertson first met Christie and groom, Jeffery Glenn, two winters earlier in the basement of that same church. It had opened as an emergency shelter when other options floundered.
Robertson called the ceremony “full circle.”
In the moments before rings were exchanged, Christie leaned forward to press her face against Jeffery’s chest.
“I’m the one who’s been running,” Christie would tell the Citizen Times after the Jan. 21 ceremony. But not anymore.
The couple had a hotel room booked for the honeymoon at the Red Roof Inn in West Asheville. But after that night, they would go back to camping on the river. It’s what they have done for the last four years, Christie said, off and on, during their time spent homeless in Asheville.