From Democrat and Chronicle, Sunday, November 12, 2000
By Staff Writer JAY TOKASZ
The legal record will show that Robert Fox and Victoria Armour were married in Penfield, N.Y., Saturday, Nov. 11, 2000.
Like most other weddings, photographers snapped pictures, the bride and groom exchanged rings and then later mingled among well-wishing family and friends.
But in the Gurdwara of Rochester, the Sikh temple on Dublin Road in Penfield where the ceremony took place, this wedding - called Anand Kaaraj - was anything but ordinary.
It is believed to be the first traditional union of a converted Sikh couple in Rochester.
By Western standards, it was entirely non-traditional.
Tuxes were out, turbans and embroidered white silk robes - for the bride and groom - were in.
Invited guests removed their shoes, tied handkerchiefs and scarves around their heads, and sat on the carpeted floor of the gurdwara during the 90 minute ceremony, officiated by minister S. Maghar Singh Chana. They listened to wedding hymns in Punjabi that describe the progress of love between a man and a woman and between an individual and God.
Many of the guests had little knowledge of Sikhism, other than what they've learned through Fox and Armour, whose names will legally be changed to Sat Dharm Singh Khalsa and Baldev Kaur Khalsa.
The religious tradition originated in the Punjab region of North India in the 1400s. Sikhs believe in a single supreme God. They revere a lineage of Gurus and respect a book known as the Adi Granth that contains the Gurus' teachings. The great prophet Sri Guru Nanak Dev Ji is believed to have been born on the same day, 530 years ago, as the Fox-Armour wedding.
"Today is a doublefold auspicious day," said Parminder Soch, a native of India and a member of the executive committee of the gurdwara who helped guide non-Sikhs through the wedding ceremony.
Fox, a 57 year old graphic designer at Xerox, has long been a practicing Sikh and a teacher of yoga. Armour, 46, teaches American Sign Language at the Rochester Institute of Technology.
The pair met in 1996 while attending a weekly morning study group. They agreed to "get together sometime," then never did. Finally, after one of the meetings, Fox asked Armour to have breakfast with him at a Penfield bagelry.
"He said, 'If we don't go now, we won't go,' and I said, 'Let's go,"' recalled Armour.
They went out again that same night, Sept. 22, to an autumnal equinox gathering in Fishers. Ever since, Armour marks the occasion monthly with a card.
"I never thought I'd get married," said Armour, who remembers pledging at age 4 not to marry. "When I met him, it was this natural thing. I didn't have to think twice about it"
Armour, who was raised a Catholic, was not yet a Sikh, but she was living a Sikh lifestyle. She hadn't cut her hair in 15 years and was a vegetarian - two key aspects of Sikh living.
Early on in their relationship, she invited Fox to have dinner with her. She had prepared beans, rice, steamed vegetables and homemade applesauce - "just what I happened to be eating that night." He said it was his favorite meal.
Friends and family said the two were made for each other.
"She knew right away," said Lynn Van Campbell, a friend of Armour. Before Fox and Sikhism, Armour tended to wear all black clothes. Now, in American-Sikh tradition, she dresses in all white.
The groom's mother, Ruth Fox, said: "I'm so glad that he found someone who is like him."
The couple hoped the ceremony would provide a reference point for their friends and family in understanding their faith.
The bride's mother Patricia Armour, a devout Catholic, said she was impressed by the spirituality of the ceremony, even if she longed for some traditional elements of Western weddings.
"I missed the frivolity - the cake, the garter, the throwing of the bouquet, the silly stuff," she said. "But this was quite beautiful really."
Afterward, the bride shared her feelings: "We say 'Wahe Guru.' That's God's name, but it's also, 'ecstasy beyond description.' That's how I feel."