Skydiving Lovebirds Fall Into Marriage from 13,000 Feet
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Michael Pahl/Skydive Utah(SALT LAKE CITY) — When a Utah couple was wed Thursday, they decided to take the plunge, literally.
Emily Lucero and Allan Toole boarded a plane in Tooele, Utah, as just another couple engaged to be married. After parachuting from 13,000 feet in the air, however, they safely landed as husband and wife. What happened in between? A wedding, of course.
“It takes about 10 minutes in our plane from takeoff to jump,” Phil Liu, manager at Skydive Utah, who hosted the nuptials, said. “The pastor did a quick two- or three-minute ceremony, the instructors tightened the harnesses and then they all jumped.”
It was also an intimate affair. The bride and groom, the pastor, and two bridesmaids were each strapped to instructors.
Like most weddings, this one had professional cameramen. They take footage of all the tandem jumpers, Liu said, and the company offers to sell customers footage of their jump, for whatever the occasion. The wedding was extra special, though.
“When people get married in your plane,” Liu said, “you throw in the pictures for free.”
This is not the first time Skydive Utah has played host to a wedding, Liu said. A previous manager, he said, was married mid-jump after the “I dos” were replaced by nods and a quick kiss was exchanged in the air. Still, this is a rare event.
“We get a lot of proposals,” he said, “but not too many marriages.”
Lovebirds Lucero and Toole have been sharing many adventures in the five years since they met, so a skydiving wedding might have been an obvious choice.
“We’ve made it a point to do other fun things like paragliding, snorkeling and scuba diving,” the new bride told ABC News affiliate KTVX-TV in Salt Lake City, “so I think it symbolizes that we like to play.”
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio