Sandwiching their wedding between rehearsals and performances may not be the big day most couples dream about.
But then, Anton Shelepov and Carrie Pierce are hardly typical.
Associate concertmaster and associate principal cellist with the Traverse Symphony Orchestra, the East Lansing couple merged lives and cultures when they met as graduate students at Michigan State University in 2005.
He was a doctoral candidate freshly arrived from Russia, where he was assistant concertmaster of the Kremlin Chamber Orchestra in Moscow and associate concertmaster of the St. Petersburg Mozarteum. She was a teacher in the Waverly and Okemos school districts who decided to go back to school for her master's degree in cello performance.
It was love at first sight.
"We were very attracted to each other's musicianship," said Pierce, who took a course in Russian after the couple began dating. "It was instantaneous."
After two years, the couple decided to tie the knot. But choosing a wedding date proved difficult. Besides meeting the demands of their graduate work and commuting to Traverse City one weekend a month, both musicians play elsewhere.
Shelepov, who grew up in Siberia, is acting concertmaster with the Lansing Symphony and a violinist with the Ann Arbor and Grand Rapids symphonies. Pierce is assistant principal cellist with the Jackson Symphony and a substitute member of the Lansing Symphony. Together they play with the Andiamo String Quartet based in East Lansing, the quartet-in-residence at Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp for the last three summers.
Then there was the matter of getting their families together, including Shelepov's mother, Tatiana, who now lives in Sweden.
So when everyone gathered to mark Shelepov's 30th birthday, the couple decided last weekend was as good a time as any to get married. They rented a cabin on Lake Leelanau and, in an intimate ceremony presided over by Unity Church minister Crystal Yarlott, exchanged vows in Russian and in English. Afterward, the families celebrated at Amical. Then the newlyweds went to rehearsal.
"Most people are like, 'How can you get married and then go to work?'" said Pierce, 29, a Flushing native whose grandparents live in Thompsonville. "But for us, playing together is special."
After another rehearsal Saturday -- "We were a little bit late," Pierce confessed -- the families got together for a tour of the region that included stops at the Sleeping Bear Dunes and Gwen Frostic Prints. And when it was time for that evening's TSO performance -- the musicians' first as a married couple -- both their families were in attendance. Coincidentally the program included Elgar's "Serenade for Strings," written by the composer for his wife as a gift on their third wedding anniversary.
"It was really special," said Pierce, who sat opposite her husband on stage sporting a wedding band on her right hand in the Russian tradition. "We have such a strong connection when we play together. It was really sweet."
On Sunday the newlyweds posed for family photos before performing the second, matinee, concert of the weekend. Then it was back home to resume their student lives.
Pierce said the couple, who will hyphenate their last names, are planning a real honeymoon during Christmas break.
"At least a weekend," she added.
Staff writer Marta Hepler Drahos can be reached at mdrahos@record-eagle.com.
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