June 22, 2009 1:38 PM PDT
A marriage made in heaven--well, zero gravity ;-)
by Chris Matyszczyk
I am very fond of love. It makes people do silly things, giddy things, and, sometimes, very strange things indeed.
However, I am full of vicarious admiration for Noah Fulmor and Erin Finnegan, a Brooklyn couple who decided to do silly, strange, and giddy all together for their wedding on Saturday. Terrestrial weddings were far too mundane for their refined sci-fi tastes.
So they thought they'd space out.
They hired a 727 from a company called Zero Gravity Corp. and floated off not so much into the sunset, but toward the sun. And then suddenly away from it.
Their marriage was launched at Kennedy Space Center and the plane's pilot apparently performed to perfection on the 90-minute flight.
"It was outstanding," Fulmor told the New York Daily News. "It was everything I think we were hoping for."
The idea of these flights seems to be that the plane makes 16 huge dips from 36,000 feet to 24,000 feet to simulate zero gravity. Which, had I been an invitee, would have surely sent breakfast into a somewhat uncontrolled orbit.
"If you turned the wrong way or didn't center yourself when zero gravity kicked in, you couldn't tell which way was up or which way was down," Fulmor said.
Which, those more experienced might say, perfectly describes marriage in general.
Now I know that some of you will be wondering what the bride wore. Because that's what everyone wonders at a wedding. Well, in an interview with the CBS Early Show (embedded here), Erin revealed that she wore a lovely white wedding dress. With trousers underneath. To avoid, you know, those awkward paparazzi shots. This dress was actually specially designed to be worn in space by a Japanese company called Space Wedding.
You might also be wondering how much this "weightless" wedding cost. In the same CBS interview, the couple say it cost about $60,000.
For the reception, they were merely man and wife who fell to earth. Yes, it was back on hard ground at the Kennedy Space Center. And the honeymoon? Ah, where else but Disney World?
But won't Space Mountain seem a little tame when compared with the wedding?
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-10...CategoryArea.4
