Laura Lykes, Adelle’s mother, was initially worried that her daughter wasn’t ready for marriage: "Eighteen -- that’s kind of young. And when the call came, we asked her to pray about [whether she was ready to get married], and she came back two days later and said she was. It’s such a personal thing, we couldn’t tell her to do it."

"She was nervous. But it’s something she’d looked forward to. It’s something my husband and I had gone through. My husband and I are very happy, so she had an expectation that it would be a good thing. I joined the church in ’75. My husband joined in ’73. Actually, the same person arranged our marriage as arranged her marriage -- Reverend Moon."

The civil ceremony was fun but not ultimately such a big deal, Laura Lykes says, because Adelle and Hyun Uk had been married in the eyes of the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity since December, when separate but concurrent marriage ceremonies in New York and South Korea united them. Each had received a photo of the other a few days earlier. "They had actually not met before he came in May," Laura Lykes says, "but they were committed to each other."

They squeezed in the civil ceremony on the same day they left for Korea, where Hyun Uk will fulfill his military-service obligation and Adelle will study Korean culture and language at Sun Moon University as a prelude to attending Princeton next year. "I’m going to go to school for the first half of the year," Adelle says, "and I’m going to stay with his family." Although she’s learned some Korean already, "It’s kind of nerve-wracking. But as long as he’s there."

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