Carol Gorbics and Tom Dean were married Saturday in Anchorage. Decorations included frozen ice molds and a snow-sculpted altar. (Photo courtesy of Bruce Batten) Carol Gorbics and Tom Dean were married Saturday in one of the colder spots in Anchorage, where the thermometer dipped to as low as 35 below. Dawn Growth, between the bride and groom, officiated, and Paul Cotter was a member of the wedding party. (Photo courtesy of Bruce Batten)

In her wedding photos, Carol Gorbics glows. Glistens, actually, from a tear frozen in place on her decidedly rosy cheek. Her gloved hands cradle a bouquet of evergreens mixed with silk roses, a scarf circles her neck and pearl earrings are visible beneath the rolled brim of her knitted cap.

"I actually nipped one of my lobes, I think,'' Gorbics said.

That's because Gorbics married Tom Dean in the yard of an Anchorage friend last Saturday. Yep, that Saturday, when most of the city shunned the below-zero cold snap.

Gorbics, a former Alaskan who moved to California to be with Dean a few years back, instead chose to embrace the inclement weather. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife biologist met Dean on board a ship in 1996, when both were doing research stemming from the Exxon Valdez oil spill. He was the vessel's chief scientist, she was a cold-water diver.

"It was important to capture the essence of us meeting outside,'' she said of their wedding. "The out of doors is something I still cherish. And how can you not be enchanted with the state of Alaska?''

Even when it's atypically frigid. A thermometer in the Baxter Bog area yard that Saturday veered between 28 and 35 degrees below zero. Gorbics wore silk long underwear beneath her skirt and sweater outfit and covered the whole shebang with a toasty jacket.

"I looked like a little stuffed sausage,'' she said. "But I was warm on adrenaline or whatever. I was fine.''

Gorbics figures the ceremony took about 20 minutes. She and Dean wrote their own vows -- she promised to rub his back and "be a companion worthy of his friendship.'' Each member of the wedding party read something out loud, too. All of the 40 or so guests lit a candle on the snow altar before the ceremony and Bruce Batten played "Somewhere Over the Rainbow'' on a ukulele that kept going out of tune.

"Poor Bruce. His fingers froze, I think,'' Dean said.

Gorbics calls the ceremony perfect, despite her frosted earlobe and icy tears.

"We all cried,'' she said. "Even though we said we wouldn't.''

Until a few hours before the wedding, the couple planned to do the deed in Talkeetna -- where it was colder still. Gorbics had her heart set on being married at a cabin she and friends built there years ago. But Friday afternoon Dean realized the logistics of getting everyone to the cabin, and keeping it warm in 35 below temperatures were overwhelming. He sat Carol down for a chat.

"OK, let's have a talk about reality here,'' he told her.

With only 24 hours to go, the group quickly pulled together plans for an outdoor ceremony in a friend's yard in Anchorage instead. Dean and the others drew up designs for an ice-block altar, snow walls to create a small amphitheater and multiple fire pits.

"It was fun,'' said Dean, who bought a special rabbit fur hat for the occasion. "It was like building snow forts or something.''

Gorbics got busy making 50 ice candles from balloons filled with water and then frozen in the snow.

Did anyone ever suggest moving the festivities indoors?

"No, they all know me too well for that,'' Gorbics said.

Her friends had been there for Gorbics during the past, difficult year. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in April, underwent two surgeries soon after, then months of chemotherapy and radiation. Her knitted wedding cap -- made by a friend days before the ceremony -- covered her super-short hair, just growing back after treatment.

Now, "I'm well,'' Gorbics said. "I believe I'm healthy and cured.''

She calls the support from her friends during that time a balm.

"It's amazing how healing that is,'' she said. "And (Dean) was a rock. What a wonderful, wonderful partner.''

So when Dean proposed on Christmas Day, and the pair thought about their already planned trip to Alaska this month for meetings, everything seemed to come together.

"It was something I wanted to do all along,'' Dean said. "It was just the perfectly right time.''

And the perfect place, both agree. Even if it wasn't, there will be at least one other opportunity. Now back home -- where the temperature is 100 degrees warmer than it was in Anchorage -- the pair is planning another wedding in Michigan where Gorbics' parents live. A third wedding might include their California friends.

Because it's all about celebrating, Gorbics said. That's something she learned from the Alaskans who worked so hard to put together the perfect sub-zero wedding.

"All of my friends knew exactly how important this was,'' Gorbics said. "Tom and I were like, 'huh?' And they were exactly right.''

But the questions still linger: Why here, why now, why at 28 degrees below zero?

"I don't know why now,'' Gorbics said. "I just know in my heart it was time.''