In 1976, a Los Angeles secretary named Jannene Swift officially married a fifty-pound rock. More than twenty people witnessed the ceremony.
Some people are just really desperate to get married. Others have deeply religious, philosophical, or personal beliefs that lead them to tie the knot with the oddest assortment of mates you could ever imagine.
Consider these:
- In 1976 a Los Angeles secretary by the name of Jannene Swift, “married” a rock in the presence of 20 witnesses. Would it be legal? No. But no worries anyway. If she got mad at him/it, she could just throw “hubby” out.
- In December of 2005, a millionaire rock promoter from Britain, Sharon Tendler, married her longtime love: a dolphin, in the Israel resort town of Eilat. The 41-year old bride and 35-year old groom had met some 15 years ago, and according to Tendler, it was love at first sight. She returned to Israel several times a year to visit her beloved and then decided to make it formal, if not exactly legal. The union was toasted with mackerel, to the cheers of hundreds of spectators.
- In December of 1999, a Taiwanese man married a Barbie doll, in an attempt to appease the spirit of his first wife, who had committed suicide 20 years before, because his family had not approved of their marriage. In an elaborate ceremony at a Buddhist temple, Chang His-Hsum wed with a blonde Barbie doll that he believed carried her unhappy spirit. The doll was dressed in wedding finery and wore some of Tsai, the dead wife’s jewelry. Paper replicas of her dowry were burnt for her use in the Afterlife. The groom’s family begged Tsai’s forgiveness, and he took the urn with her ashes home to put on his mantel. All of this without consulting the second wife whom he had married after Tsai’s death.
