It had all of the ingredients of a typical spring wedding — a bride in white, a groom in a tux, lots of relatives, lots of photographs, flowers, and a few bowlers.

Bowlers?

As John Jay Hall and Pamela Linda Brown lined up to exchange wedding vows Sunday afternoon, the not-too-distant sound of balls crashing into candlestick pins and the sweeping hum of reset machines could be heard.

A bowling alley in a church? Well, how about a church in a bowling alley? Sort of.

You see, explained Jay after the ceremony, it was the second time around for both, and they nixed the idea of a stuffy, straightforward ceremony. Keep it a little loose this time, so to speak. Jay, being an avid bowler — a member of the professional tour, in fact — sparked the idea from Pamela: the concession area of the bowling alley.

“We just thought we’d relax and have some fun with it,” he said.

Or as they phrased it in the invitation: “John Jay Hall and Pamela Linda Brown invite you to attend a display of reckless optimism as they join their hands in matrimony. In keeping with their overall view of convention and propriety, this joining will be held at the Bangor-Brewer Bowling Lanes.”

To balance things out a bit, they did hold the reception at the Bangor Hilton.

When asked before the ceremony — but just after she found out that Jay had invited members of the media — why they picked the lanes as their wedding site, Pamela replied, apparently half-jokingly, “He spends most of his time here anyway.”

When asked whether the newlyweds would spend their honeymoon there as well, she said, “Probably.”