By LEAH WEATHERSBY

Jay Zaremba, pastor at Fremont Baptist Church, tells a great story about one of the most unusual weddings he has performed. Part of the bride's ancestry was Native American, and the couple wanted to have a ceremony that reflected that heritage.

The adventure started when Zaremba and the groom scoped out the peak in the Columbia Gorge area, which would serve as the ceremony site. They literally had to clear the path with a chain saw in order to check out the site before hand.

On the day of the wedding, the wedding party four-wheeled and hiked their way up to the small mountain. When they got to the top, the couple disappeared behind some bushes and changed into their handmade buckskin wedding clothes. A cake shaped like a mountain was waiting for them when they got back drown.

That's called a non-traditional ceremony.

There are so many traditions associated with weddings that it's easy to find one or two to break. These days, it's taken for granted that you don't have to get married in a church, especially if you can find an officiant like Zaremba.

Of course, there are plenty of couples who don't belong to a particular religious organization or don't share exactly the same religious traditions, but still want to infuse their wedding ceremony with some degree of spirituality and symbolism. These couples have to get creative.

When Jordan Schwartz, a Wallingford resident, married Shelly Farnham in August 1995 at the Daybreak Star center in Discovery Park, they had to overcome the challenge of their different religious backgrounds.

Schwartz is Jewish, while Farnham came from a Christian tradition. Before their ceremony with friends and family, Schwartz and Farnham went off by themselves to be married in a civil ceremony. However, for their wedding party they created a ceremony that could involve all of their guests.

Schwartz and Farnham set out a table with various edibles such as wine, honey and chocolate. As each guest entered, he or she added a pinch of something on the table to a glass and made a wish for the couple. As part of the ceremony, the couple's parents and Schwartz and Farnham said their wishes out loud. Then the bride and groom drank from the glass.

Schwartz said he knew that some guests might feel comfortable without an officiator at all, so he pulled out a sock puppet to finish the ceremony. The couple even added the comical touch of a sock puppet objector.

But suppose the couple doesn't want to have a civil ceremony at all. There is at least one other option, as Sharon Garrett, a graduate student in the Department of Public Health at the University of Washington found when she was asked to perform a friend's wedding ceremony last year.

While Garrett wasn't a member of any particular religious group, she found it was easy to be become an ordained minister through the Universal Life Church web site, www.ulc.org.

The Universal Life Church is a non-denominational church based in California. According to Garrett, while couples do need to get a marriage license, people who want to perform weddings in Washington don't have to be recognized by the state, only by the organization that certifies them. The Universal Life Church is only too happy to recognize would-be ministers. Garrett said she spent about two to three weeks researching and writing the ceremony. Once again, the World Wide Web was a big help since some couples post their wedding ceremonies and even pictures there. In the end, it worked out.

"It added humor and it added a personal element," Garrett said of her participation. However she went on to warn that disorganization can be one of the pitfalls of having a friend perform the ceremony.

"Get someone who knows how to take care of details," Garrett advised. "Or be pretty Zen about it!" (