The First Ever 21st Annual World's Shortest St. Patrick's Day Parade will be host to what might be the world's shortest wedding ceremony on March 17.
Janet Smith and Jerry Don Wheeler, who met through work "years ago," will be on a float called "Lucky You, I Do" and plan to exchange vows during their 60-second trip down the 98-foot parade route on Bridge Street.
"This parade and attention is not us or how we live, but it's just crazy and something that we will always remember," Smith said in a news release from Visit Hot Springs. "It'll be another one of our amazing experiences together."
Smith and Wheeler will be the first couple to be married during the actual parade, Visit Hot Springs Special Events Manager Alexis Hampo said. There have been weddings surrounding the event, including one by Scott McClard a few years ago.
"They sent in an application, and I reached out and asked, 'How real is this?'" Hampo said Monday. "They said it was the real thing. I said, 'Can you get it done in 60 seconds?' And they said they could."
McClard, who was the 2019 parade king, officiated the wedding of Cheryl Kauffman and James Brassfield approximately an hour before the 16th annual event.
According to the release, the claimed record for the world's shortest wedding was set in 2007 in 6 minutes, 36 seconds in Westminster, Colorado.
The pair split time between homes in Hot Springs and Mount Ida, the release said.
"Years later, we ran into one another in town and caught up on what was going on with one another," Smith said.
"There was a commercial on the radio for the Keith Urban concert that night in Little Rock. He said that we should go, but it literally was going to start in four hours. I said we didn't have time to go and he insisted we did.
"I insisted that we went only as friends and he agreed 100 percent. This went on for about 40 minutes. Somehow we managed to go separate ways, get ready, meet again, and be in our (amazing last-minute) seats on time. He was a total gentleman, and even took me to Waffle House afterwards. We have been together ever since that night," she said.
The pair are grateful to "have found one another," Smith said.
"Meeting someone later in life hits differently," she said. "Your goals are different at this point, and you tend to slow down and find that 'things' are not as important as the people and experiences you share."
The St. Patrick's Day weekend celebration starts on March 16 at 4 p.m. with The Zero-K World's Shortest St. Patrick's Foot Race, and country artist Pat Green and Arkansan Bonnie Montgomery will hold a free concert that evening at 7 p.m.
"Yellowstone" actor Forrie J. Smith will start the parade at 6:30 p.m. featuring legendary Dallas Cowboys running back Emmitt Smith as the celebrity grand marshal.