Greetings –
It’s a walk down the aisle—or more like walk on the wild side. Bizarre weddings are chronicled in a new book from Ripley’s Believe It or Not!, called Enter If You Dare! The book is an annual collection of unusual, unbelievable and amazing stories from around the world.
Some of its wacky wedding stories include:
- Wooly Wedding – pg. 28: Shepherdess Louise Fairburn from Lincolnshire, England, got married in a wedding dress made of wool from one of her own flock. Husband Ian wore a woolen waistcoat made from the same sheep. The dress took 120 hours to make. Louise, who even carried a Bo Peep-style crook on her big day, loves her sheep so much that they were featured in her wedding photos.
- Bride to Bee – pg. 158: When Li Wenhua and Yan Hongxia, workers at Nanhu forestry commission in China, decided to tie the knot, they made sure they invited some of their coworkers—in the form of tens of thousands of honeybees. The swarm formed living-insect material for an alternative pair of wedding outfits. The number of people stung at the wedding is unknown.
- Zero Gravity – pg. 29: A couple from New York proved they were head over heels in love during their wedding by getting married in zero gravity. Science fiction fans Noah Fulmor and Erin Finnegan paid more than $15,000 to have their wedding at Kennedy Space Center in a converted Boeing 727 jet airplane which, in the course of a special 90-minute flight, undertakes spectacular roller-coaster-style dives, which simulates the weightlessness experienced by astronauts on space walks. As they floated on air, the couple exchanged rings made from precious metal fragments of a meteorite that crashed to Earth 30,000 years ago.
- Bear Witness – pg. 75: When naturalist Casey Anderson married actress Missi Pyle in Montana, his best man was Brutus, a half-ton grizzly bear. Brutus also joined the 85 guests at the reception, where he helped himself to some wedding cake.
- Paper Dress – pg. 201: A woman got married in China wearing a dress made entirely out of paper. Designer Zhu Zhu took two and a half months to make the cotton paper dress for the bride, her best friend Sha Sha.
- Long Train – pg. 214: For her wedding to Zhao Peng in China, Lin Rong wore a dress with a train that stretched more than 1.3 miles behind her. The gown, which cost nearly $6,000 and took guests over three hours to roll out, was the groom’s idea. As an added romantic gesture, it had 9,999 red silk roses pinned to it.
- Shrek Wedding – pg. 232: Living up to his name, Keith Green married Christine England dressed up as the movie character Shrek. He and his bride—who was dressed as the ogre princess Fiona—spent three hours having their faces and hands painted green.
- Wedding Toast – pg. 235: Opening their presents following their wedding in England, Claire and Stuart Linley were amazed to discover that they had been given no fewer than 24 toasters. They kept one and returned the other 23.
- Thrifty Bride – pg. 240: Heather Saint, a 20-year-old bride, beat the recession in 2008 by buying her wedding dress on the Internet auction site eBay for just five pence (8 cents).
- Bamboo Balance – pg. 243: Three couples got married on the Xiangjiang River in China while balancing on bamboo poles that measured 8 inches in diameter. The couples, who wore traditional wedding attire, are all members of the local bamboo rafting club and chose to get married on the water to demonstrate their skill at the sport.
Please let me know if you would like to pursue any stories in the book or a story on the book itself. Images are available, as well as interviews with people from Ripley’s or people featured in the book.
The book cover, as well as several pages and individual images, can be downloaded at http://www.ripleybooks.com/newsroom.
Regards,
Frank Wolff
Wellons Communications
407-637-6000 cell
407-339-0879 office
Frank@wellonscommunications.com
Posted by Wellons Communications, an Orlando public relations firm