No wedding-bell blues here, thanks to reality television

Camera. Lights. Surprise. “I do.”

Three years ago, Betty Butler and her daughter Darcell… Camera. Lights. Surprise. “I do.”

Three years ago, Betty Butler and her daughter Darcell both planned to get married. But instead of having a big celebration for the both of them, Betty and Darcell had a falling out and didn’t speak for three years.

On Friday afternoon, the silence between them was finally broken.

When Betty Butler left her house Friday, she thought she was simply meeting one of her daughters for lunch. But when she arrived at Pittsburgh’s Grand Hall in the North Side, she was greeted by about 50 of her friends and family members — including the man she had planned to marry three years earlier and had remained with ever since, Robert Hart, in a white tuxedo, and Darcell, dressed in a dark blue bridesmaid’s dress.

As she screamed in excitement, Betty was told that she was about to have the wedding she had wanted for years — and that her daughter wanted her forgiveness.

“Thank you, sweetheart!” Betty screamed.

While flailing her arms in the air, Betty continued screaming in excitement.

“It’s too pretty to be real,” she said, referring to the hall that was once a church, and is still adorned with huge stained-glass windows and high ceilings.

“Wait ’til you see your wedding dress,” Sukanya Krishnan told her.

And within minutes, Betty was ushered out of the room to get dressed in her very own white wedding gown.

Betty’s surprise reunion and wedding were all part of the new television show “Home Delivery.”

The show’s hosts and production teams travel across the country to provide surprises for people, creating 15-minute segments on the daily, hour-long show.

“You can’t put ‘Home Design’ in a box,” said Krishnan, the host for the segment taping Friday. “It’s not just one thing.”

Some of the surprises the show has taped so far include family reunions and making homes handicapped-accessible for family members. The show began taping segments in June and airing Sept. 13. Krishnan said that getting to see the reaction of people is the best part of her job.

Since June, Krishnan, who is one of four different segment hosts, has traveled to 15 or 16 different states, usually staying in each city for two days.

Two weeks ago, Darcell said she contacted the show because she knew that her mom really wanted a wedding and that by providing her with one, they could reconcile. The same day she contacted the show, she was told “Home Delivery” would soon be featuring her mother.

Just about a week before the show was scheduled to tape, NBC contacted several local vendors to donate their time to the show and to Betty’s big day. One of the vendors contacted was Otto Productions Pittsburgh’s DJ Service, owned and operated by Pitt student Frank Gloor. Gloor and his assistant, Devin Leibert, a fellow Pitt student, agreed to donate their time to the production in return for the publicity that the show may create for them.

Gloor said the show probably got his company’s contact information from the Internet because on some search engines, including Yahoo!, his company’s site comes up as the first link. He designed the site himself in one of his computer engineering classes and has used his computer skills to keep it updated, making sure that it continues to appear as the top link on several search engines.

Even those in the bridal party did not know about the wedding until shortly beforehand. Betty’s sister and bridesmaid, Shirley Butler, said she had just heard about it two days earlier.

“It’s still like I’m in a dream,” she added.

A few minutes after Betty was taken away to get dressed, the production crew began taping the wedding party walking down the aisle. Then the team taped a staged scene of the chaplain and the groom walking to the altar. Within a few more minutes, the wedding party, groom and chaplain were actually all walking and mingling about the room — waiting for the bride to finish getting ready.

When the bride was finally set, the wedding party walked right back to their places in the front of the room. The bride walked down the aisle alone before joining Robert at the front of the room, where they were wed by Chaplain Dan Jenkins in a ceremony that lasted about 10 minutes.

Afterward, Betty said the day was a fantasy come true.

“This is all I ever wanted,” she said.

With a huge smile on her face, she said she felt like “Cinderella, Snow White — all wrapped up in one.” She added that the day was just like the romance novels she’s read.

She explained that she had not gotten married in the past three years because she was busy taking care of her mother, who had suffered from Parkinson’s disease.

The broken heart she had suffered from for the last three years was repaired, she added. “All’s forgiven,” she said.

Before sitting down for too long, though, her brother was calling her over to dance with him, and she scurried off.

The episode of the show taped in Pittsburgh last week should be televised some time in early December, Gloor said he was told. “Home Delivery” can now be seen locally at 12 p.m. on WCWB and at 3 p.m. on WCN.