Steven Reyes/Special to the Home News

Mathew Fleek, 24, and Monique Moses, 23, both Marines stationed at Twentypalms, Calif., walk down the aisle at the Leatherneck Club.

By Jean Reid Norman

Fri, Aug 22, 2008 (midnight)

Marines Pfc. Matthew Fleek and Lance Cpl. Monique Moses had their plan: They would head to Las Vegas over the weekend and get married. It was the only chance the young couple had of being assigned to the same city when they finished their training in Twentynine Palms, Calif.

What they found in Las Vegas was more than a 24-hour marriage license bureau that could accommodate a quick wedding. They found a family of local Marines who gave them a memorable occasion and the pictures to prove it.

Beaming in the front of the Leatherneck Club meeting room in Las Vegas as the two enlisted Marines said their I-do’s were Cheré Pedersen of Henderson and Cheryl Gardner of Las Vegas. They had spent the previous 48 hours working the phones and making arrangements to pull the ceremony together.

The tale began 10 days before the Aug. 16 wedding day, when Fleek and Moses, who are in communications training, were talking about what to do. He had orders for Camp Lejeune, N.C., in September. She had been ordered to Camp Pendleton, Calif., in October.

“We talked about breaking up, which would be the most practical thing at this point,” Moses said. “But I wasn’t ready to let him go, I guess. He said we could get married, and I said sure.”

Then Fleek told his mother, Patricia Moritz, a former Marine staff sergeant who lives in Oregon, of their plans, and she started looking into what it would take to get them married in California. They would need the one thing they could not get: time off from the Marine Corps during regular business hours to get a marriage license.

Moritz suggested Las Vegas, then started looking for resources. She found the Marine Corps League, an organization of retired Marines who run the private Leatherneck Club, and Gardner, the group’s adjutant. Gardner called Pedersen, who heads up Families United, a Henderson-based military support group, and the two women went to work.

Over the next 48 hours, they enlisted the help of Pastor Ron Fairbairn, a former Marine, who drove in from Pahrump; Pedersen’s husband, a pastry chef who provided the wedding cake; the Leatherneck Club, which provided the hall; a former Marine who served as photographer; and a couple of military mothers who picked up their rings and made bouquets.

“Once a Marine, always a Marine. We help one another,” Gardner said.

Moritz said once Garnder and Pedersen got involved, “It took on a life of its own.”

Invitations went out through various military networks, drawing a roomful of guests from the Las Vegas area. One San Bernardino couple, a pair of former Marines who had married 28 years ago for the same reason, heard about it on the Internet and made the trip to Las Vegas to witness the nuptials.

Nearly everything was picture-perfect, until Gardner went to start the music for the wedding party to enter the room. A technical malfunction threatened the ceremony.

That was until Fleek, who comes from a family of bagpipers, went to the car and brought in his bagpipes. Soon the room was filled with music.

Dressed in their green service uniforms, Pfc. Thomas Dixon, the best man, escorted Lance Cpl. Amie Lapointe, the maid of honor, into the meeting room.

Fleek, wearing his dress blue uniform and playing his bagpipes, entered next, followed by Moses, wearing her Marine finest. A cell phone on the table behind the pastor allowed the groom’s mother to hear the ceremony from Oregon.

After they were pronounced man and wife, the Fleeks walked through a Marine honor guard, swords raised to create a canopy.

“We were just going to come to Vegas and get married, just like anyone else,” Fleek said. “It’s actually pretty amazing.”

Jean Reid Norman is an editor for the Home News. She can be reached at 990-2658 or jean.norman@hbcpub.com.