Six Decades of ‘I Do’s’: UVA’s Longest-Playing Organist Remembers 400-plus Weddings

Barbara Moore has achieved a feat no other person in the world can claim: She has performed at more than 400 weddings in the chapel at the University of Virginia. “Oh my,” she recalled. “Gee. I know I’ve played about 700 weddings, but not all of them are at the chapel. So, I’d say maybe two-thirds of them, 400-plus, 450, something like that.” She played her first wedding when she was 16 years old. Born and raised in Charlottesville, she still remembers her first ceremony in the chapel – one of hundreds she’s meticulously recorded in compact, spiral notebooks during the last 60 years.