It was Halloween at Gracelawn Cemetery in Auburn and three figures stood in the late afternoon sun.

Carmella Rose Murphy, a petite, good-natured grandmother, positioned herself in front of the young bride and groom – he, dressed in black with skeleton buttons running up his shirt, she, wearing a purple and black wrinkly velvet gown.

Murphy had already said a few words when she remembered the couple’s earlier request.

“The ceremony started (when) I said, ‘Aren’t you getting married on grandma’s grave?’ So they went over on grandma’s grave and stood on grandma’s grave, and I did the ceremony. C’est la vie.”

Murphy laughs lightly telling the story. She has married more than 1,000 couples.

It takes something like exchanging vows over a late relative to stick out in her memory.

Murphy tied the knot for 23 Lewiston couples last year, more than any other officiant, according to records in the City Clerk’s Office. The next most-marrying person did eight.

A notary public for 25 years, she loves a wedding. Some brides and grooms book the Sabattus woman months in advance, some just an hour. Her schedule is already into 2009.

“They say, ‘You married my cousin or my aunt’ or something like that. One girl called yesterday for a date this year: ‘You married so and so and you did an awesome job,'” Murphy said. “You know, I see people on the street, ‘Hi, you married me!’ It’s hard.”

She then smiles and admits, in half a whisper, she’s started to forget people’s names.

Murphy took the notary test when she was driving school buses in Lisbon Falls, figuring it would be a nice job on the side. She’d had the license two weeks when a friend called asking, “‘You got your thingy?’ I said, ‘What thingy?'”

She married the friend on a Saturday. Her second wedding was a big debut, the Bates College chapel. She didn’t get nervous, still doesn’t.

Her fee is $55, more if she travels. Murphy’s married people at her home, on the rocks at Land’s End on Bailey Island, at the Sabattus Street Eagles Hall, in Thorncrag Bird Sanctuary. She’s done five or six at the Androscoggin County Jail.

“They always tell you – the girl – ‘He’s not guilty,'” Murphy says. “The next day you open the paper…”

She offers a prayer at the end of ceremonies, but only if couples want it.

And she’s mindful of the presentation. “I always ask before I go, I say, ‘I’m not trying to be nosy (but) I want to know what color you’re having because I don’t want to go in some dress that clashes.’ I don’t want to stick out in the crowd,” Murphy said.

The only question she remembers asking before the unusual cemetery job: “We do have permission to be here, right?” (They did.)

Murphy lost her husband, Chauncey Crafts, in 1996. They’d been wed 38 years. She didn’t believe there would be any more marrying for herself in her future.

Then she met Jim.

“His daughter was my hairdresser,” Murphy said. “‘You know what,’ she says, ‘I’ve got a father…'”

At the time, Murphy owned a huge house in Lisbon Falls, really beautiful, but it took lots of upkeep. She and Jim had been dating about eight months when she announced plans to sell it and look for a new, small place.

“That’s when he said, ‘What are you looking for a house for?’

“I said, I can’t afford $5,200 in taxes a year. He said, ‘Well, don’t look for a house.’

“That’s when he popped the question on me. On a Thursday morning, I remember. He said he had gone to look for diamonds. I said, ‘What’s wrong with you?’ And that was how it started.”

They’re both laughing as she tells the story. The couple tied the knot seven years ago.

Despite a home filled with bright red Valentine’s decorations, and being in the regular company of so many happy couples, Jim said he wouldn’t call his wife overly romantic.

Then, neither is he, he said. “But we do think a lot of each other.”