Exchanging Vows--From Air, Land or Sea

Night shift nurses Kelly Rooney and Kevin Edwardsen of Moorpark literally got carried away on their wedding day.

In April, the couple said “I do” high above Moorpark in a hot-air balloon supplied by Dreams Unlimited of Canyon Country. For $125 per person, the company provided two colorful balloons for the 12-member wedding group.

After a one-hour flight, the pilot gently lowered the balloon over a stunning field of wildflowers swimming with butterflies, bluebirds and red-winged blackbirds.

“It was so calm and so exciting at the same time,” Rooney says. “We leaned over the basket and picked wildflowers, which were later used to decorate the top of the wedding cake.”

Last February, Levia and Dale Wyant of Oxnard were married aboard an old-time train on the Fillmore & Western Railway in Fillmore.

Wyant works for the railway, which does not offer wedding services to the public, although it may do so in the near future, says Jan Clark, vice president of retail sales.

County weddings have also taken place under water.

Dave Reid, vice president of the Channel Islands Underwater Photographic Society, recalls an undersea wedding in which “the bride had a parasol and plastic flowers. You couldn’t hear much, but the gesturing and mumbling back and forth was great fun.”

How and where you get married speaks volumes about people, according to Psychology Today’s spring survey of American attitudes toward romance and marriage.

Couples dying to declare their hunka-hunka burning love before an ordained Elvis impersonator in Las Vegas are definitely in the minority.

Three of four people surveyed by the magazine think any ceremony in Las Vegas is tacky.

Almost as bad, the poll says, is getting married in matching outfits.

NON-TRADITIONAL WEDDING: Dreams Unlimited hot-air balloon, (800) 2HOTAIR.