For couples planning a wedding, a lot of thought goes into where and how they tie the knot. And while we’ve all heard of celebs opting for destination weddings, a new company is taking things a step further to make your big day truly out of this world.
The first space wedding took place 16 years ago, when American Ekaterina Dmitriev married her Russian cosmonaut husband Yuri Malenchenko by video link from the International Space Station in Houston, Texas. She walked down the aisle to a David Bowie song, while his best man played the wedding march on a portable keyboard. She wore a white dress she had ordered from the most famous bridal salon in town, and he wore his standard ISS crew uniform with a bow tie.
At the reception, guests were served a combination of Italian and Russian foods. There was also a giant fruit bowl with the shapes of the ISS and the space shuttle. A life-size cutout of Malenchenko greeted guests as they entered. The couple’s daughter Camilla was there as well. Yuri Malenchenko had a long career in the Russian air force and went on two more missions to the ISS. He is number two in the list of cosmonauts who have spent the most time in space, and he’s a holder of Russia’s highest award.
But the wedding still had some repercussions on his career. The space agency urged him to wait until he was back on Earth to marry, citing legal complexities and Soviet-era rules that required active military officers to get permission before marrying foreign citizens. However, he had a strong desire to marry, and his family convinced him to go through with it.
A few months after the wedding, he returned to Earth and reunited with his bride. They then had a traditional ceremony in Yaroslavl, in northern Russia. During their marriage, he had also gained Russian citizenship — but not American citizenship, since he hadn’t officially renounced it.
In the past, there have been other weddings from space — but they’ve been private affairs. Now, a business called Space Perspective is offering to hold weddings for clients on its commercial spaceflights.
According to the company’s website, a wedding on the edge of space will cost you $125,000. That includes the six-hour flight, a celebratory meal and drinks, plush seating, and interactive displays that show science data about your trip.
The company is currently accepting reservations for spaceflights from 2024, and it plans to add more flights if the demand is high enough. To reserve a spot, you must pay a deposit of $10,000. So if you’re thinking of making your wedding an out-of-this-world experience, you’ll have to act fast. The rest of the details aren’t available yet. But you can watch a YouTube video of the spacecraft that will be used for the weddings below. Space Perspective was founded by two former Biosphere 2 crew members who are experts at examining the capacity of closed ecological systems to sustain human life during spaceflights.