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Portraits Rebecca Teagarden

Judge Barbara Linde | Helps do 'I do" up right

Chief presiding Judge Barbara Linde of the King County District Court does what judges do all day long: wears a black robe, makes rulings, settles disputes, writes judgments. But the best part comes just before she goes home — when she legally joins together man and wife, couples who take out a license and make a date for life. At the courthouse the until-death-do-us-parters get none of the pomp and all of the circumstance in the judge's chambers.

Q: How many weddings have you done?

A: Between 30 and 40 a year in the 12 years I've been a judge.

Q: Is there a time most popular for a courthouse wedding?

A: I once did three weddings on Feb. 14. But I've had years where Valentine's Day came and went, and I didn't get a call. The end of the year is always busy.

Q: Do you have a sense about these things?

A: I really think I do. I don't know of anybody who hasn't made it that I thought would make it.

Q: How did you come up with your ceremony?

A: Right after I became a judge, one of my best friends asked me to do her wedding. She had done a lot of looking for ceremonies. I had already been given a script by one of my fellow judges. I put those two things together, and over the years, as people have written their vows I've added and fine-tuned mine a little bit. But it's really the work of others that I've cobbled together.

Q: How long have you been married?

A: I'm coming up on 20 years this summer.

Q: How do you and your husband stay connected?

A: We have a similar job. He's a Superior Court judge. We commute together morning and night, and we have done that for 20-plus years. We have a couple of kids, so we're involved in their lives. We have great friends, so we're social. We like to laugh.

Q: What was your wedding like?

A: It was gorgeous. It was at the Skansonia ferry on July 11. There had been rain up until July 10. It got to be 80 degrees, and there was a full moon. We danced until 1 in the morning. We were so much younger, that's the depressing part.

Q: Would you ever want to renew your vows?

A: I think about them as I'm doing it. That's really enough for me. My husband does weddings, too. I gave him my script to use, so we do it on a parallel track.

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