Newlyweds Dave and Tina Hopkins in front of Tina's Citabria.
When Dave Hopkins and Tina Ziolkowski finished saying their “I do’s” earlier this year, the groom got the green light to kiss his bride—literally. The couple, both pilots, had decided to wed where they first met—at Brackett Field Airport (POC) in La Verne, California. He was a 2,500-hour flight instructor with a killer British accent. She was a 900-hour Citabria owner who had been thinking about taking a trip to England. It was a match made in the heavens and cleared by the POC tower with a steady green beam from the light gun as Hopkins kissed his new wife.
Aviation takes pilots many places, but five years ago, when Hopkins and Ziolkowski first met, they never dreamed it would take them to the altar. On the day they met, Ziolkowski, now Tina Hopkins, had just finished greasing the tailwheel on her airplane and needed a place to clean up. She walked into a Brackett Field flight school, heard an examiner friend’s voice, and went to say hello.
“That’s when I saw Dave with a student,” she recalled. “I’d recently contemplated a trip to England where a WWI vintage Vickers Vimy replica I have flown was going to be put on static display. When I heard Dave’s accent, I found a convenient way to work in that tidbit.”
Later, she says she asked the examiner “what he knew about the Brit.” As it turned out, “the Brit” had asked the same examiner what he knew about the Citabria owner. The rest, as they say, is history.
Bound by a mutual love of airplanes and airports, Brackett Field seemed a fitting choice for a wedding location. The couple’s timing was impeccable. The airport had recently begun an outreach effort to more closely connect the pilot community with tower personnel. What better way to strengthen that relationship than with a wedding between two pilots on the airport ramp?
“The airport was incredibly cooperative with all phases of planning,” Tina said. In addition to providing ramp space for airplanes and the ceremony, several fly-by clearances for the bride, and the green light from the tower to celebrate the union, the airport coffee shop transformed itself for the occasion.
While the airport personnel took everything in stride, the bride’s dressmaker was at first stunned by her request to tailor the dress so it wouldn’t interfere with the rudder pedals when she flew in. The bridal shop employees couldn’t quite wrap their heads around the idea of a bride flying to her own wedding in her own airplane. Once they adjusted to it, “they thought it was the coolest thing they’d ever heard of,” Tina said. By the time the bride mentioned that the maid of honor’s garter belt would have a Stinson Reliant sewn onto it, no one batted an eye.
So it came to be that on the afternoon of April 11, a beautiful VFR day in the Los Angeles area, one groom, one minister, 80 guests, and a local TV news crew attracted by the unconventional venue—and entrance of the bride—were waiting on the ramp of Brackett Field for the arrival of a red-and-white Bellanca Citabria. Right on schedule, the airplane appeared from the east. It flew by once. Then twice. Then a third time. The groom began to wonder if the bride was having second thoughts.
Not at all, as Tina told the CBS news crew later. She was simply savoring the joy of arriving at her wedding in her own airplane and seeing the crowd and her soon-to-be husband waiting for her on the ground. She pulled off the high-pressure landing with aplomb and rolled up to the altar to enthusiastic applause.
After the wedding ceremony, the airport tower had one last gift: For the next hour, it ran a congratulatory ATIS announcing the Hopkins wedding on 124.4. For this aviation duo, Information Alpha will never be the same.
