Bishop Geralyn Wolf holds onto Mason Sklar, 5, her cousin’s son, as she waits to walk down the aisle. The wedding party included, from left, Anna Harris, 10, and Rita Harris, 12, of Peterham, Mass., and Lydia DeAngelo, 10, of Rumford, and her sister Isabella, 6.

THE PROVIDENCE JOURNAL / Frieda Squires

PROVIDENCE — The bride walked down the aisle without her usual miter and crosier, forsaking both for a cream-colored wedding dress and a garland about her hair.

In a festive ceremony yesterday that started with her walking down the aisle hand in hand with her cousin’s 5-year-old son, with five young girls close behind, Episcopal Bishop Geralyn Wolf married Thomas Charles Bair Jr. before a crowd of nearly 400 at her diocese’s Cathedral of St. John.

“I think it was the most spirited wedding I ever attended,” said former Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold, a long-time friend who had baptized Wolf on her conversion from Judaism to Christianity 36 years ago and preached at her ordinations to deacon, priest and bishop.

Indeed, Bishop Griswold appeared surprised when he asked the guests if they would “do all in your power to uphold these two persons in the marriage?” and the response was an overwhelming “WE WILL.”

“Good,” Griswold replied after a slight pause. “Sometimes other congregations are, shall we say, more reticent.”

While there are six other bishops of the Episcopal Church who are known to have married after taking office, the others have been low-key, private affairs. Bishop Wolf not only invited the entire House of Bishops but she also invited every member of the diocese, making for what Bishop Griswold referred to later as a more intense, enthusiastic celebration. “The diocese sort of feels they are her family, too, which is wonderful. And she feels that way also.”

Bishop Wolf, who has been bishop here for 11 years, said that after becoming bishop she always assumed she would remain single.

But then, while making a pastoral visit to St. John the Evangelist Church in Newport last summer, she met the man who would change all of that. Bair, who had gone to help the parish with a stewardship campaign, found her interesting to listen to and invited her to lunch. Bishop Wolf said later: “I thought he wanted to talk about the church, but he really wanted to get to know me.”

Each time Bair visited Rhode Island, he’d stay at the home of the Rev. Norman Catir, the priest that Bishop Wolf had put in charge of St. John’s and who was a long-time friend of Bair’s, going back to when Catir was rector of the Church of the Transfiguration in New York City and Bair was on the vestry. After meeting Bishop Wolf, Bair never visited Rhode Island without dropping in to see her.

The dating continued into the fall, when both became increasingly certain they were going to be husband and wife.

Neither the bishop’s mother, Harriet Chappuis, now of Laguna, Calif., or her sister, Barbara Cooper, of Los Angeles, were surprised by the development

Both said as a young woman Geralyn Wolf frequently indicated a desire to get married, and while she stopped such talk after becoming bishop, she caught the bridal bouquet at her sister’s wedding two years ago in California. “We have a picture of her catching the bouquet,” her sister recounted yesterday. “She was very happy.”

“She is a most unusual, fantastic lady who achieved all the things that she dreamed about,” her mother declared. “Yes, she dreamed about getting married.”

Bishop Wolf, who is 60, has always been known as a stickler when it comes to making sure ceremonies are liturgically correct. The cathedral dean, the Rev. Canon Harry E. Krause, said there was never any question that the music for yesterday’s ceremony would be thoroughly Anglican. Patrick Aiken, an organist at Central Congregational Church in Providence, who performed some of the music, agreed. “You knew that there weren’t going to be any songs from West Side Story.”

Alongside Bishop Griswold during yesterday’s ceremony were two bishops with ties to Rhode Island: David Joslin, who left Rhode Island to become bishop of Central New York and who is back in the state as an assisting bishop, and Arthur Williams, the retired bishop of Southern Ohio who was bishop-in-residence here in 2003 when Bishop Wolf went on a sabbatical.

Other bishops at the ceremony included Gordon Scutron of Western Massachusetts; Gayle Harris, the suffragan or assistant bishop of Massachusetts, and her predecessor Barbara Harris, the first woman to be ordained a bishop in the Anglican communion. (Bishop Wolf was the sixth woman to be consecrated bishop and only the second to be named to lead a diocese.)

There were two best men at yesterday’s service: Thomas Bair III, 19, and Christopher, 15, both sons from the groom’s previous marriage, which ended in divorce 10 years ago.

Readings for yesterday’s celebration were taken from the books of Tobit and Colossians and the Gospel of Mark. The reading from Colossians, 2:12-17 speaks of being with one another and forgiving one another and allowing “the peace of God to rule in your hearts” but stopped just short of the next two verses, “Wives, submit to your husband” and “Husbands, love your wives.”

After the ceremony, the couple joined family and some of the guests at a reception at the Providence Art Club. Bair, who is moving his financial consulting business to Rhode Island, said they were going on an 11-day honeymoon in the Caribbean.

rdujardi@projo.com