Round the world wedding safari reaches Panama
By Katherine Monahan
Panama gets its share of people on a quest for everything from money to love, but two young British travelers should qualify for an entry into Ripley’s Believe it or Not.
They chose Panama to celebrated their “18th wedding” in an Embera village. Alex Pelling and Lisa Gant are travelling around the world in a van named “Peggy” trying out different wedding ceremonies, looking for lucky number number 31.
The couple, who are about 30 years old, sold their house and belongings to finance a two-year trip, to celebrate their love affair and provide a unique way to choose the final performance. They had their first wedding in England in June, and are now driving south through the Americas, before traveling through Europe, Africa, India, China, Japan, Indonesia, and finally New Zealand. Alex and Lisa plan to have at least one "wedding" in each country.
“We’re going to exchange vows in the most unique wedding locations we can find. We want to experience the difference in each ceremony and find out what it is that makes the bringing of two people together such a worldwide tradition,” they said in their blog, 2people1life.com.
At the end of it all they will choose their favorite ceremony, invite all their friends and family, and get ready to tie the knot and take their vows at wedding Number 31.
Their Panama wedding looks like one of the most fun and unusual so far. After canoeing to an Embera village, tribes people decorated them with flower necklaces and full-body henna tattoos.
Their blog tells of other ceremonies, that have ranged in culture and spirituality from a Mayan ceremony in Mexico – “The shells of the sea snails are used as trumpets to call to the gods, to consecrate the site where the presence of Hunab K’uj, the Bakabes, the 13 heavenly gods, and the nine from the underworld are invoked, called to the ritual to be witnesses of the ceremony” – to a drive-through wedding in Las Vegas.
They have also gotten married in a crashed historical airplane in Costa Rica, and on a rock on the state line in the middle of Honeymoon Lake – where one of them was standing in Wisconsin and the other in Michigan.
With twelve weddings and three continents still to come, the ceremonies promise to grow ever more exotic.
Lisa and Alex are writing about their non-stop wedding safari, and searching for sponsors. Wine sellers, dress fitters, photographers, and hotels have all stepped in to catch some of the publicity, as the wacky wedding adventure becomes a mobile product.
They have just shipped “Peggy” across the Darien Gap and are getting ready for their first South American wedding.
