Seniors/Persons with Disabilities Day at the Ventura County Fair kicked off with the annual “Blessing of the Marriage” event on Tuesday. The morning event was for couples who have been married 30 years or more to renew their wedding vows.
This year the Blessing of the Marriage included 16 couples from Oxnard, Ventura, and Camarillo with the longest couple being married 78 years. The ceremony was held at the Seabreeze Stage under two giant red and yellow umbrellas. Over 40 guests were in attendance to see the long lasting couples. Deacon Ed Mills, from Our Lady of the Assumption Church, blessed the couples’ marriages for the eighth year, but before the blessing he was all laughs and smiles.
Deacon Mills asked couples what their secrets to their long marriages were and there were responses of all kinds. Couples said things such as patience, date nights, and “hot sex on the weekends.” The ceremony had everyone laughing, clapping, awing, and crying at one point. After, punch and vanilla and chocolate cupcakes were served.
“It’s a lot of fun and the answers are fascinating,” Deacon Mills said. “It’s amazing who you get to see. People enjoy the ceremony and [the couples] get to relive their marriage and they just smile. It’s quite a day.”
Tony and Ana Bellisario, who have been married 59 years, were one of the couples sitting in the crowd.
“We always like to renew our vows,” Mr. and Mrs. Bellisario said. “We just enjoy one another and we’re best friends. It just works out.”
Ann Victoria Spiller has been coordinating the Blessing of the Marriage and watching couples renew their vows for over 20 years.
“The same couples come year after year and it’s just a really beautiful ceremony for them and a lot of them look forward to it every year,” Spiller said.
Later in the day, the Rabbit Hopping and Poultry Obstacle Course took place at the Small Livestock area. Young children had rabbits on leashes and were making them jump over small rubber hurdles. The first-time event saw an audience of over 25 people come out to cheer and clap and even had some of them participating. Audience members could volunteer to jump rabbits over the small hurdles. Over 15 of them did and received a pink ribbon for participating.
“Some [rabbits] take to [jumping] really fast, they’ll do it the very first time, and others take some coaxing to just kind of show them,” Tiffany Cook, coordinator of the event, said. “They actually have competitions for rabbit hopping throughout the United States.”
The poultry obstacle course had chickens walking up and down two wooden boards, zig zagging their way between rubber pipes, and tip toeing their way on a piece of wood until they jumped to the ground.
Now that the fair is in full swing, the Commercial and Commercial Annex Exhibits have come to life with a variety of vendors trying to sell visitors their items. The commercial exhibits have blown glass art, hot sauce, fresh fudge, beef jerky, trading cards, and more.
The Great American Petting Zoo also opened up where, for a fee of three dollars, visitors can enter a small petting zoo. Animals inside the zoo included deer who wanted to nibble on visitors’ clothes, llamas, sheep, a kangaroo with a joey, goats, chickens, and a donkey. Visitors could pay an extra dollar to buy an ice cream cone full of food to feed the animals.
If you haven’t gone, there is still time to get to the fair, but you have to be quick. It ends this Sunday at 10 p.m. when fireworks will close out the fair.
