For $250,000, you too can slip the surly bonds of Earth to say, `I do'

Weddings atop mountains and waterfalls. Weddings while skydiving and bungee jumping. Weddings inside mines and caves.

Yawn.

It's high time for people to expand their horizons and look beyond this world for marriage inspiration.

Cindy Cashman has. The professional speaker and self-help pocket book author from Lakeway, Tex., hopes to be the first person to get married in outer space.

Surely that's the final frontier for getting hitched.

It could happen as early as 2009. Cashman, 48, has an agreement with a Oklahoma-based company called Rocketplane, which is trying to pioneer spaceflight for the general public, to be one of the first regular folks shot into space.

For her, though, the trip will be extra special. "To go someplace where very few people have gone, and see the curvature of the Earth, and be weightless, and to look into the eyes of the man I love and say, `I do,'" she says in an interview, "this ties it all together: the excitement, the adventure, the opportunity of a lifetime!"

Rocketplane XP, the airplane-like spacecraft in which she and her fiancé will exchange vows, will use its jet engines, then its rocket engine to propel its passengers almost vertically beyond the Earth's atmosphere on a parabolic trajectory.

At its 100 km apogee, they'll be in outer space, free from the shackles of gravity, gazing at Earth's bright contours below.

Actually, there won't be time for that. They'll have just three to five minutes before they fall back into Earth's grip. Quick, the vows! "Do you take this man...I do! Do you take this woman...I do!"

Cashman and her 55-year-old beau, Mitch Walling, a pilot for regional airline American Eagle, also won't be able to stand for the ceremony. For safety reasons they'll have to stay belted to their seats. But he'll probably be able to kiss the bride.

A space wedding was bound to happen. Wherever humans have brought themselves, they have also brought their most celebrated institution. The whole idea of the "extreme wedding" was born out of the idea that the more arduous the journey, the more special the bond.

So far, couples aren't clamouring to have their weddings in space. This may be partly because of the cost. Even though Rocketplane and its competitors, such as billionaire Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic, are set to expand space travel beyond the rarefied astronaut, it won't be available to the masses: Each ticket will cost about $250,000 U.S.

That hasn't stopped Virgin Galactic from collecting $25 million in deposits so far. One woman has even mortgaged her house to be able to go.

Virgin has had a number of inquiries from couples who want to fly to space together. One couple, George Whitesides – head of the U.S. National Space Society and, as of last week, an advisor to the company – and his wife Loretta, say they want to have their "honeymoon" in space.

Cashman says the idea came to her as a random thought that just popped into her head while she was meditating.

It wouldn't be out of character for her. She has already tried flying upside down with an aerobatic pilot.

The problem was that, at the time, she didn't have a fiancé. Not even a boyfriend.

Fortunately, she was enrolled in a dating service and was meeting singles in cyberspace. After going through 32 guys, she met Walling.

Not long after, he popped the question – at high speed on a motorbike. She was over the moon, and told him she'd like to head that way to get hitched.

"People think we're crazy," Cashman says, "but others just expected this from me."

All systems are go, it seems. There's one problem, however. If they wed in space, where on Earth would they officially be married?

One aviation lawyer told an Austin newspaper that there is "no body of law or jurisdiction that exists in space to confer recognition on a marriage ceremony."

Toronto family lawyer Steven Bookman disagrees. He compares it to couples who marry in, say, Las Vegas, or on a beach in the Caribbean or, in the case of landed immigrants, back in their native countries. If they're legally married in those places, they're considered married here.

"It shouldn't be any different" in space, he argues.

The challenge is, where would the marriage be registered? "It would seem to be the (jurisdiction of the) person that owns the actual craft you're getting married on," Bookman says.

Cashman still hasn't decided who will perform the ceremony. There's still one empty seat in the four-person vessel should she find someone. But that may not be necessary, Bookman says.

"The captain of a ship has the authority to marry people outside of the jurisdiction of the country where the craft is registered," he says.

"I'm sure he would have to authority to marry them and it would be recognized everywhere."

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