The Wedding Glacier
A cracking blue glacier tongue on the south coast of Iceland at 4:15 PM in late September, where a wedding arch made of driftwood and dried wildflowers is sinking two inches per hour into the ice.
A couple has paid €14,000 for a destination wedding on Sólheimajökull glacier, and the officiant's floatplane is forty minutes late. The ice beneath the arch just split with a sound like a gunshot, opening a crevasse eighteen inches wide that swallowed the ring bearer's left shoe. Seventy-three guests in rented crampons are standing on what the glacier guide — who has gone very quiet — keeps calling 'the stable section.' Double wants to start the ceremony without the officiant and figure out the legal paperwork later. Bust wants to evacuate to the black sand beach a quarter mile downhill before someone ends up honeymooning inside a moulin.
“The glacier is literally moving — that's romantic! We do the vows now, the ice holds for twenty minutes, and this becomes the greatest wedding story anyone's ever told.”
“The ring bearer is missing a shoe and standing next to a hole that goes to the center of the earth, but sure, let's prioritize the photo op.”
Forty seconds into Double's unauthorized vows, the 'stable section' calved off like a dinner plate sliding off a wet counter, dumping the entire wedding party thigh-deep into glacial meltwater and sending the driftwood arch on a slow, majestic journey into a moulin while the photographer — still shooting — got the most viral wedding video Iceland has ever produced.
We're still married in the eyes of the glacier, and that video has 11 million views, so honestly who lost here.
The bride's grandmother was extracted by search and rescue holding a champagne flute that was still full, which is more composure than anyone in this story deserves.