You may bite the bride

Reporting from Las Vegas—
The groom wore a blood-red tie, the bride a strapless blood-red gown.

The officiant emerged from a coffin.

The vampires skulked in the back of the chapel.

The guests were dumbfounded.

When Jacqueline Seidel and her boyfriend of 25 years decided to get married, she wanted something different. Vegas different. Something more daring than (yawn) dressing as Elvis and Marilyn Monroe.

A Star Trek-themed ceremony didn't pan out. Nuptials aboard the Treasure Island hotel pirate ship? At $3,000, no way. So Seidel ended up at the Viva Las Vegas chapel, which has carved out an unusual — and surprisingly popular — niche in the cutthroat Vegas betrothal business: Halloween-themed weddings.

The brainchild of an owner infatuated with stagecraft and the undead, the various spectral ceremonies available to couples feature a Count Dracula, a "Twilight" Edward, a zombie Elvis and a scythe-wielding Grim Reaper. (Insert marriage-equals-death joke here. Oh, and fork over $750.)

As outlandish as the ceremonies may be — a zombie groom once pretended to slurp up his bride's brain — they've drummed up business for the chapel as it battles with dozens of others here for a dwindling pool of brides and grooms.

Last year, Clark County issued fewer than 92,000 marriage licenses, the lowest number since 1993. (Licenses peaked at more than 128,000 in 2004.) The competition is so ferocious that, a few years back, rival chapels accused each other of slashing tires and shouting death threats.

Other Vegas chapels offer Halloween-inspired nuptials, said Joni Moss, founder of the Nevada Wedding Assn., but none with the theatricality of a haunted house. "They're putting on mini-stage-productions over there," she said. Take the chapel's "Rocky Horror Picture Show" package: The staff belts out "Time Warp" and a Dr. Frank-N-Furter performs both the ceremony and the song "Sweet Transvestite."

As Halloween has morphed into a holiday that gives adults an excuse to play dress-up, retailers have responded with pumpkin-infused libations and costumes that hug grown-up curves. So too has the wedding industry. Nationwide, it's now the most popular day in October to get married, according to the editor of wedding website The Knot.

Even Vegas chapels with no ghoulish options expect to see an uptick in business Monday. (When Halloween falls on a weekend, they are even more crammed with Cleopatras and Frankensteins saying "I do.") At Viva Las Vegas, a downtown chapel near a tattoo parlor and a strip club, about 45 couples are slated to exchange rings this Halloween. More couples will wed in the preceding days.

Seidel, 42, who lives in Perham, Minn., scheduled her vampiric ceremony for Oct. 18. She and her fiance, Dan Lubitz, started dating in high school, and he proposed a short time later. "We're too young," Seidel said then. So they waited. And waited.

Finally, when Seidel's brother got engaged, she and Lubitz decided it was time. "I didn't want a church wedding," she said, "maybe because we've been together for so long."

Seidel has been fascinated with creatures of the night since watching "Interview with the Vampire." A repeat Vegas tourist, she had smiled through a Stratosphere hotel show called "Bite," in which vampires bare fangs and breasts to a heavy metal soundtrack. Seidel learned that the show's aerialists also performed in the Viva chapel for a ceremony called "When Vampires Fly."

Sold.

Viva Las Vegas Weddings, which opened about a decade ago, is the brainchild of Ron Decar. A former singer at the Tropicana hotel, Decar also sang at weddings. In his opinion, couples only had two options in Vegas: a suited celebrant or Elvis. So Decar offered over-the-top weddings that other chapels mostly pooh-poohed, at first.

From the get-go, he sold a "gothic wedding" package, mostly because Decar loves Halloween. As a kid, he'd turn his basement into a haunted space and charge neighbors a nickel to walk through. Now Decar often plays the Grim Reaper, using a vaguely British accent, and demands his employees embrace the scary — not sexy — side of Halloween.

"He says, 'If you want to be Little Red Riding Hood, you better be a dead Red Riding Hood,' " recalled photographer Millie Loewinsohn, who has worked at the chapel for years.
These days, about half of the ceremonies are traditional, Decar said. But of the themed offerings, the gothic wedding trails only the Elvis pink Cadillac package in popularity. "06/06/06 was a great day for us. A lot of the other chapels were dead," said Decar, seemingly unaware of his own pun.

One afternoon this month, Decar checked on the accouterments he'd collected for Halloween weddings, including a 7-foot-tall Frankenstein monster and an animatronic version of "Exorcist" star Linda Blair.
"She talks and shakes, but I'm having problems getting her head to spin," said Decar, a lean, black-haired, somewhat persnickety man wearing a white Elvis jumpsuit from a wedding earlier that day.

About 1 in 4 weddings nationwide last year was themed, a sort of nuptial that tends to appeal to brides who want little to do with a church and a white dress. Newlyweds are older than in years past, more likely to pay for their own weddings and more desirous of a ceremony that reflects their tastes, said Anja Winikka, editor of The Knot.

Also, Halloween weddings are fun. Mostly. Decar had to say no to one couple who asked to drink actual blood.

Last year, a couple asked to be married at 1 p.m., the so-called 13th hour. The groom showed up with a large rod and some chicken feathers, photographer Loewinsohn said. Mid-ceremony, he started chanting incoherently.

"The hair on my arms stood up," Loewinsohn said.

"I've never felt so bad after a wedding," said fellow photographer Kalin Ivanov, who preferred shooting another Halloween couple who were caked in fake blood. The bride's mother wore ghostly makeup, a sweat shirt that said "Zombie Lover" and a huge smile.

Seidel's evening ceremony began with a blast of fog and the boom of thunderclaps. Her dark-suited father escorted her down the aisle to a recording of maniacal laughter.

The groom beamed as his bride joined him in front of some tombstones and a propped-up coffin.

Dong! Dong! Dong!

At the sound, the casket creaked open and Dracula stepped out. Played by manager Brian Mills, he wore a black top hat and brandished a chalice of faux blood. The couple's dozen guests sat wide-eyed as he led Seidel and Lubitz through their "I do's."

"The rings you're about to exchange are like a vampire's life — eternal," Dracula said.

Seidel swallowed a laugh.

As she and Lubitz swapped rings and wedding-day promises, however, she started to choke up.

"Keep breathing," Dracula said. "You're doing great."

Together, the couple lighted a white candle. Then Dracula summoned the vampires. The black-sheathed aerialists emerged from the chapel's shadows and hooked themselves to a rope-and-pulley system. They spun with the flash and speed of a disco ball — to Def Leppard's "Love Bites."

The guests applauded. Dracula made Seidel and Lubitz vow to not be "a pain in the neck." Everyone laughed.

Then the newly married couple walked back down the aisle to the soundtrack from "Halloween."

Moammar Khadafy's last moments may be seen in new video; son Saif al-Islam still on the lam

As new video emerged depicting Moammar Khadafy's bloody final moments, Libyan rebels Saturday chased one of the deposed dictator's sons desperately trying to escape the country.

Saif al-Islam - once considered an international playboy - was racing across Libya's vast desert in an attempt to reach Niger, where some of his relatives have already sought refuge.

Al-Islam's exact whereabouts and physical condition remained a mystery two days after he fled Sirte, the coastal city where his father was killed.

A group of Libyan rebels claimed that al-Islam, 39, was severely wounded - and perhaps lost an arm - after his convoy was struck by a NATO bombing raid.

But officials in the new Libyan leadership could not confirm that account.

Al-Islam, long considered Khadafy's favorite son, spent years away from Libya, living in a $16 million house in a London suburb and partying in St. Tropez. But he returned to defend his father earlier this year - and promised "rivers of blood" if the NATO offensive did not cease.

If al-Islam is found alive, he is expected to be tried for war crimes at The Hague.

Khadafy's body remained on display outside a dingy meat locker, though the bullet wounds that could provide clues to the circumstances of his death were covered.

A new cell phone video emerged yesterday that shows Khadafy, 69, bleeding but alive while sprawled on the floor of an ambulance.

A handgun suddenly enters the frame and, as the camera jerks away, shots can be heard. When the camera locates Khadafy again moments later, he appears dead.

Though the video is murky, it raises more questions about the Libyan rebels' initial claim that the tyrant was killed in a crossfire. The United Nations has launched a probe into the killing.

Surprising Cardinals product of La Russa's recipe

ST. LOUIS – It might not be as revered as the Coca-Cola formula, as valuable as Warren Buffett's financial strategy, or even as treasured as the sauce on your favorite burger.
The St. Louis Cardinals happen to have their own secret, too, and manager Tony La Russa isn't about to share it.

They have fine-tuned it to perfection, and used it to reach the World Series.

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The Cardinals, who were making vacation plans a month ago, will face the American League champion Texas Rangers Wednesday night in Game 1 at Busch Stadium, leaving the baseball world scratching its head.

"I think we're all trying to figure it out," says Hall of Famer Dennis Eckersley, a TBS analyst, who reached the postseason five times in 11 years pitching for La Russa. "You look at Tony, and this guy can be uptight in spring training. I look at him now, and I have never seen him, or his team, look so relaxed in my life."

After qualifying for the postseason on the final day of the season, as they did during their World Series championship run in 2006, the Cardinals have toppled the team with the best regular-season record and the one with the top home mark. They have done so after losing their co-ace to a season-ending injury in spring training, with four closers and a roster containing 10 players experiencing the postseason for the first time, with everyone buying into La Russa's formula. Whatever it is, the manager says, this isn't the time to reveal it.

"I don't really want to get into it or really share it," says La Russa, 67, who has won six pennants and 66 postseason games in his probable Hall of Fame career, trailing Joe Torre (84) and Bobby Cox (67).

"But I think we have a good philosophy, a good formula, handling pressure situations by definition. There is a certain frame of mind that's time-tested, been passed along, and we pass along. I want to keep that edge, if it is an edge, as long as I can because I believe in it.

"It's nothing magical or mysterious about it. It's mostly about embracing pressure, making it your friend. We've done that, and it's worked."

Relaxed team atmosphere

The Cardinals, who overcame the largest September deficit in National League history for a team making the playoffs, are treating this pressure-packed postseason like they're playing Frisbee in the backyard with the kids.
The only time they've been overcome by pressure all month is trying to uncork slippery champagne bottles with wet hands and stinging eyes as they've thrown clinching parties in three road cities in the last 18 days.

The team's postseason run was so late, Cardinals general manager John Mozeliak acknowledges, they didn't bother employing advance scouts on the road. They were 10½ games back Aug. 25, 8½ out in September, 7½ out with 20 games left, and three out with five games to play. They won the wild card on the final day of the season.

The Cardinals (90-72) were down two games to one in the best-of-five NL Division Series vs. the Philadelphia Phillies, who were a big leagues-best 102-60 in the regular season. St. Louis won back-to-back games, including a 1-0 thriller in the finale in Philadelphia.

They were tied with the Milwaukee Brewers at two games apiece in the NL Championship Series, but despite their starters recording just 20 outs in the next two games, still managed to win both. They celebrated the pennant at Miller Park, where the Brewers had baseball's best home record (57-24).

Now, the Cardinals are facing a Rangers team (96-66) that has won back-to-back AL pennants after bludgeoning the Detroit Tigers with 15 runs in the deciding game of the ALCS. Texas is favored to win its first World Series title in franchise history.

"We're having the time of our lives," says St. Louis reliever Jason Motte, who still is waiting to be anointed with the official title of closer. "We do stupid stuff. We blast music in the clubhouse. We trim our beards in weird ways. We have Mohawk hairdos. I've never been around a team like this where everyone has so much fun around each other."

They can celebrate victories as wildly as a college fraternity but still play the game with respect.

Cardinals first baseman and three-time MVP Albert Pujols called time before Prince Fielder's final at-bat Sunday, just before the Brewers were eliminated. That allowed Milwaukee fans more time to cheer what might have been the final game in a Brewers uniform for Fielder, a free agent-to-be. From the dugout, La Russa tipped his cap to Fielder and began clapping. You wouldn't know this was a critical postseason game.

"That's Tony's managing style," Mozeliak says. "He tries not to make this any different than any other game. You won't see him hold team meetings. There's no speeches. He doesn't change the focus from the everyday routine we have during the year."

Overcoming inexperience

This is the 14th time La Russa has led one of his teams into the postseason, but Game 6 against Milwaukee, he concedes, was the most nervous he's been in a game. Watching your starting pitcher (Edwin Jackson) cough up three homers to the first eight batters will do that to a manager. It was the first time a team advanced to the World Series without a starting pitcher lasting more than five innings in a best-of-seven series, prompting La Russa to make 28pitching changes in 53 innings.

But the rest of the team picked up the starters. Motte, who didn't have a save until Aug.28, gave up one hit in eight innings this postseason. David Freese, who had never played a postseason game, was the MVP of the NLCS, batting .545 with three homers (including one in Game 6 that helped give the Cardinals an early four-run lead) and nine RBI. Lance Lynn, who had not pitched for the Cardinals since Aug.9, threw 5⅓ shutout innings in the NLCS.

"There's no set formula, no magic wand, but you get used to winning," infielder Ryan Theriot said. "We expect to win every game we play."

The Cardinals have 10 players in their first postseason, yet they hit .310 in the NLCS, made two errors and didn't surrender a lead.

"It felt like Lou Gehrig, Babe Ruth, Ted Williams and all them were hitting against us," Brewers catcher Jonathan Lucroy said. "They were hitting everything. Really, they couldn't do anything wrong all series."

Says Cardinals ace Chris Carpenter, "… The way Tony preaches it, pressure is a good thing. Embrace it. Take it in. Enjoy it."

You want pressure? How about losing co-ace Adam Wainwright to an elbow injury before pitching in his first spring training game? Or blowing a four-run, ninth-inning lead Sept.22 vs. the New York Mets, the Cards' 11th defeat with a lead in the ninth or later?

"One of the neatest things about what's happened to our club was we took the attitude that tomorrow is the last game of our lives," La Russa says. "You don't think about anything beyond that. It's solved a lot of problems.

"If we're not good enough, then what's your regret? Nothing."

Right fielder Lance Berkman and infielder Nick Punto say they can't recall La Russa yelling at them after a loss. Even after that loss against the Mets, La Russa refused to let his team get down.

"He told us, 'Let's not let this derail from what we're trying to accomplish,'" Berkman says.

Three weeks later, and they are in their second World Series in five years.

"He's one of the best managers in the history of the game," Berkman says. "What he's done with this team, and all of the adversity we've overcome, and here we are in the World Series."

Rev. Moon's Son Answered Call to Help at Home

In 2005, Moon Kook-jin was in the U.S. running his small manufacturing firm when his father asked him to return to his native South Korea to solve problems at the small conglomerate his father had started but left others to run.

For Mr. Moon, his return involved more than familial duty. His father, the Rev. Moon Sun-myung, is the founder of the Unification Church and one of the most recognized Koreans in the world.
After decades in which he and his associates ran the businesses more as charities than as for-profit organizations, Rev. Moon realized they were becoming a major drag on both the finances and reputation of the church.

His son was in his mid-30s, a point, the younger Mr. Moon says, "when I was willing to do something to help my community out."

As chairman of the Tong-il Foundation, which operates the Unification Church's businesses, Mr. Moon has pared the number of businesses to 12 from just over 30 via a series of asset sales and mergers. All now produce an operating profit and contribute to the charitable work of the church, instead of drawing money from it.

It has been a wrenching process, Mr. Moon said in a recent interview with Evan Ramstad at his office in Seoul. Mixing business and religion is always difficult, but especially so when one's father is a world-wide celebrity. Excerpts from the discussion:

WSJ: What is the basic structure of the Tong-il Foundation or, in English, Unification Foundation?

Mr. Moon: I'm the chairman of the Unification Foundation here in Korea. That's a nonprofit. It's actually a religious institution by its corporate form. It's a supporting institution to the Unification Church. And our foundation owns a business group. We are different than other business groups in that other business groups operate to make profit for their shareholders. We operate to make profit in our business group for our church.

We have a church hierarchy. I'm not at the top of the hierarchy. My father is the leader of the church. My function is more like a chief operating officer. He actually decides where the major direction for our group investment is, which industries we're going to be operating in, and then I'm executing the strategy and trying to make it work.

WSJ: What was the basic problem you encountered when you arrived in 2005?

Mr. Moon: We had a very challenging situation because we had over 30 businesses and we had quite a lot of losses in the group. And the accounting and management was less than adequate for the size of the companies we were running. We started investing in businesses [in the 1960s] because a lot of our members needed jobs. It was kind of like a jobs program initially. We were a new church and a new religion and we weren't really very well accepted in society. Our members weren't really given job opportunities. As a result, the management of the companies was not fully professional and they didn't operate efficiently.

WSJ: What was the first thing you did?

Mr. Moon: Within the first week I interviewed everyone at the foundation headquarters and the conclusion I came to was, if I'm going to fix this problem, it's not going to be with this staff. So this is where I first focused on changing personnel. I re-staffed the entire headquarters. I focused on bringing in a lot of professionals, CPAs, attorneys, seasoned managers and then we contracted with several consulting firms to help us start the process of reform. We spent a lot of time sorting out the group portfolio. We tried to scale down the size of the problem to make it more manageable. We got rid of the ones we didn't want to spend time on and made time for the business we wanted to fix.

WSJ: Would you describe some of the moves you made?

Mr. Moon: We had this business called INP, a shipbuilding business that was acquired by our group after our group restructured in the 1997 IMF crisis period. When we looked at the business, at the capability of that business, and the prospects going forward, we thought it was not possible to operate profitably for the foreseeable future. We got rid of that shipbuilding business and then another smaller shipbuilding business. Then we had a number of small manufacturing businesses, about eight of them. I worked very hard to change them and we turned them into one company called TIC. And it has viability now. They're in three major lines of businesses: automotive parts, grinding machines and ball screws. Now the business is viable. That process of integration was largely successful and that's a businesses we could expand through M&A.

WSJ: Was it essentially your goal to get the businesses to make money for the church?

Mr. Moon: What was happening in the past was that the foundation received church donations from around the world and a lot of those monies were being used to subsidize the businesses we owned. That's the reverse of the [current] model, though you can't say it's the complete reverse because the businesses were actually like welfare programs for church members. The difference now is, since all the businesses are profitable, the flow of money from church members to businesses has stopped. And now, the foundation receives money from the businesses and provides it to the church and its mission activities.

WSJ: What is your father's role on the business side?

Mr. Moon: I basically present recommendations from a professional point of view. The nonprofit aspect is up to my father to decide. Based on his direction and perspective, we proceed. My father has never really been interested in the details of the business. He's more interested in the overall direction. The actual detailed operations he doesn't really get so involved.

WSJ: Was it harder to let people go than in a normal business setting because many of the people were connected to the church?

Mr. Moon: It's been much more difficult to restructure this business than if it was just a normal business group that didn't have the religious component. You had a lot of cross-pollination from people who work in the ministry working in the businesses. But they weren't businesspeople by background. As a result, they really didn't know what to do or how to do things properly and there were a lot of mistakes made.

Well, it worked, but it was a very painful process. Whenever you do restructuring, you always have your standard demonstrations and hate mail. I had those. But because it involved the church, it was also a lot more personal. That was the most difficult aspect of it. I had lots of back-seat drivers.