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From the Associated Press:

WEST BURLINGTON, Iowa - A pair of National Guard soldiers were married among the plastic smiling snowmen, lighted reindeer and holiday poinsettias of the Wal-Mart store where they worked, met and fell in love.

Brett Hamilton and Erin Sapp were married last week after the bride-to-be received orders signaling a likely deployment to the Middle East.

``This wasn't what we would have wanted for them,'' said Sapp's mother, Sheila. ``But I told them we'd support them any way we can.''

Hamilton, who planned to ask Sapp to marry him this summer, moved up his plans after she received orders to report for training Dec. 1. Sapp said deployment to the Middle East is likely after training is completed.

Hamilton, who works in the Wal-Mart car care department, and Sapp, a floral department employee, are members of the National Guard's 224th Engineering Battalion.

They hastily arranged the ceremony with Dan Davis, the store manager.

Dozens of Wal-Mart employees wearing blue vests emblazoned with ``How Can I Help You?'' wept, cheered and smiled the two were married. The bride and groom wore their dress Army uniforms.

Hamilton and Sapp have planned a larger wedding celebration when she returns home.

Back in the old days, when a territory was settled, a central location was chosen to erect a church so that everyone could get to it easily, and be chastised for only performing back breaking labor for 16 hours of a 24 hour day. Yes, the lord was gonna get ya for sinnin', even if you were too damned busy trying not to die from starvation, disease, the elements, or that "handful" of people who had been there for a few hundred years before you and were a little ticked you were shooting their buffalo and burning their wood. Back then at the old church, grandpa lit the fire in the stove, papa read the "readins," both Old and New Testament, and mama led the choir.

These days, Grandpa's a greeter, papa works in home improvement, and mama's a cashier. Nothing says retail like Jesus, and vice versa, they both have that "eeee" sound in them. When Sapp and Hamilton start their family, they'll undoubtedly find Baptismal fonts on aisle 11.

Maybe, at 35, I've reached full-blown curmudgeon status, but I can think of about, oh, I don't know...666 places I'd rather get married than inside a #$%& Wal-Mart. Call me idealistic, but I'm willing to bet Andy, Barney, Aunt B., Floyd, AND Clara wouldn't be caught dead attending a wedding at a large retail outlet. Not to get all longhaired and egg-headed on everyone, but I had an English professor at Stanford who wrote two books on how religion was replaced in literature from the beginning of the Industrial revolution to the present, by secular worship of love and comedy; that is to say, literature ditched its focus on a cultural cynosure as an extension of some sort of god or gods, and got down to the nitty-gritty of being human.

Well, boars and sows, bulls and cows, geese and ganders, we've come full circle. We don't need any of that these days. We just need a podium from aisle 45, flowers from the garden center, a bible from aisle 22, rings from the jewelry counter, and a cake from the bakery. Convenience is indeed divine, and true love is one-stop shopping.

Sometimes, around 1pm on Saturday at AM1220 on your radio dial, we wonder if the whole world has gone nuts. Somewhere between monastic contemplation of the mystery of the divine birth AND easy credit for easy terms, lies The Other Side of Country. We like to think listening to our show is like pouring yourself a Vanilla Cherry slushy before shopping for your nativity set.