Former Probate Judge Joseph B. White marries Joseph David Smith, 58, and Cyndi LaRose, 49, as friends watch at a Honey Dew Donuts, in North Kingstown, where they met. Faraq Mohamed, owner of the franchise, provided the food and cake, top.

The Providence Journal / Steve Szydlowski

NORTH KINGSTOWN

Honey Dew Donuts shop owner Faraq Mohamed greeted a customer a little after 3 p.m. yesterday by asking: “Coffee or the wedding?”

The customer wanted coffee. Mohamed knew how he took it, and prepared it as the customer read a sign on the counter: “Congratulation. Today we celebrate the union of Joe and Cyndi.”

In the tiny dining area, the groom sipped a cranberry juice and the bride visited nervously with friends and fellow customers. The balloons were up, the flowers arranged, the food ready. Everyone was waiting for Joseph B. White, 40, a former North Kingstown probate judge who was to perform the ceremony.

“I had the privilege of knowing Joe and Cyndi before they met,” Mohamed said. “I watched as they fell in love.”

Cyndi LaRose, 49, a caregiver for Coventry Home Care, has been coming to the coffee shop at 8230 Post Rd. since before Mohamed bought it three years ago.

Joseph David Smith, 58, a Vietnam veteran who works at Kingstown Mobile Home Park, came often when his niece worked behind the counter.

“I saw this good-looking guy standing up there,” LaRose said. “He was a country-looking guy, the type I look for, the Grizzly Adams type,” she said.

They fell in love while helping Mohamed with an errand on Veterans Day, just two Sundays ago. Two days later, Smith asked her to marry him. She said yes.

He’ll never forget the date, because it was his birthday.

LaRose always wanted a small wedding with a justice of the peace, she said Tuesday night.

“I always wanted a puppy,” Smith said.

LaRose wanted it to be casual. “I don’t even own a dress,” she said.

“You couldn’t get me in a tie,” he said.

“I’m really looking forward to it,” she said.

“I’m as nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs,” he said.

They called White on Friday. He told them it was “too cold to go down to the beach, and everybody was coming here anyways,” so they took Mohamed up on his offer.

They picked out rings Friday. On Monday they got their license.

Mohamed topped the triple-tiered cake with miniature Honey Dew coffee cups. He asked the shop’s baker, Marjorie Harrison, to prepare the food. There was going to be a DJ and dancing, but the DJ couldn’t make it. “They give me short notice,” explained Mohamed, who is from Egypt.

His wife, Mona Mohamed, who worked the counter yesterday morning, invited Gene and Cheryl Giroux, who know Cyndi “from saying hi,” to come back at 3 for the wedding. “We went home and cleaned up,” they said while waiting for the ceremony to begin. They have been married 30 years.

Rob and Maureen Motherway, married seven years, come twice a day to the shop. Their role in the ceremony was to present the roses. Ray and Sandy Porcelli, friends of the groom, were ring bearers. They’ve been married 31 years.

Jack Cipriano came in his jogging pants, and Pat Manning, one of Cyndi’s clients, came with Bill Ruggiero.

White arrived from Providence, where he works as a lawyer, and put on his judicial robe. He briefed the couple about what he would ask them to do, and then the moment arrived.

The groom stood up. “Time to take the lamb to the slaughter,” he said.

In the more than 200 weddings that White has performed, he has developed ways to help the couple remember their ceremony. “A lot of times it’s a big blur.”

White told Cyndi to take Joe’s hands, palms up, in hers, “so you may see the gift they are to you.”

“These are the hands that provide strength and stability, that lift your chin and stroke your hair,” he said. When Joe took Cyndi’s hands, White described them as “the hands of your best friend, smooth and carefree on your wedding day.”

Then came the exchange of vows and rings.

Joe’s eyes crinkled at the corners, but his look was earnest. The tips of Cyndi’s earrings trembled as she spoke her vows.

Then they exchanged roses.

“A few moments ago you were each holding one small rose, and now you are again holding one rose,” White said. This first gift, he said, “is a symbol of true and abiding love.”

“Remember to focus on what’s right between you, not the part that appears to be wrong.”

They plan to spend Thanksgiving at an unnamed casino in Connecticut.

dnaylor@projo.com