Weddings on the Fringe of the World: on Mount Everest, the Rockies and within the Cozumel Channel.

To achieve their marriage ceremony venue, Austin O’Reilly and Iulia O’Reilly crossed a swaying suspension bridge, making an attempt to not look down on the glacial river beneath. With every step, the bridge shook underneath the load of individuals and yaks. Mr. O’Reilly, 25, had seen comparable bridges within the 2015 film “Everest.” Now, he was on that titular mountain together with his fiancée: strolling a precarious bridge, crossing jagged moraines and traversing rocky terrain on a nine-day trek to the Everest base camp.

As terrifying because the bridge was, there was no turning again. “You’re simply hanging on for expensive life and understanding that your marriage ceremony is on the different finish of this trek,” at an altitude of 17,600 toes, Mr. O’Reilly stated.

The couple lives in New York and met in 2019 by means of mutual associates at Seton Corridor College in New Jersey, bonding over their love of the outside and journey. When on the lookout for a marriage venue in 2022, nothing felt proper. “My dad jokingly was like, ‘What about Everest?’” Ms. O’Reilly, 26, stated. The concept took maintain and got here with an additional benefit: It might be cheaper than an American marriage ceremony.

“We actually wished one thing that might problem us and symbolize our love for one another” stated Mr. O’Reilly, an accountant at Deloitte.

On Might 22, the couple reached the bottom camp with Ms. O’Reilly’s dad and mom and two of Mr. O’Reilly’s associates. The ten-minute ceremony was accompanied by the distant rumble of avalanches. “Simply you, your loved one and the next energy up there,” stated Ms. O’Reilly, a researcher at Fox.

The bride wore a gauzy white costume, and the groom wore a go well with; they each wore mountain climbing boots. “With the backdrop of the icefall and the glaciers, listening to avalanches within the distance, you might have this actually highly effective second — and also you’re additionally disadvantaged of lots of oxygen,” he stated.

Their trek was hosted by Laura Gravino and her husband, Ian Taylor, who personal Ian Taylor Trekking. For the 13 years they’ve been married, the couple have facilitated a number of trekking weddings. Ms. Gravino stated that, for her, the attraction of an journey marriage ceremony lay in its distinction with huge American weddings, which may typically be sophisticated and costly.

The O’Reillys are one in all many {couples} having an journey marriage ceremony, taking their venue out of the realm of the peculiar. These adrenaline-heavy occasions commerce ballrooms and historic estates for mountains and lagoons, pushing {couples} to bodily extremes and setting pulses racing much more than they’d already be.

An journey marriage ceremony can also be a chance for a pair to partake in actions that introduced them collectively. Haley Badenhop and Owen Leeper met at a sand volleyball courtroom in Jackson Gap, Wyo. “He’d been like, If you wish to go on an journey, let me know,” Ms. Badenhop, 36, stated. A month later, they did simply that for a full week — cliff leaping, boating, mountain climbing and paddle boarding. “By the top of that week, I used to be like, Is that this what my life may very well be like?” she stated.

Mr. Leeper, 38, is knowledgeable skier, and Ms. Badenhop typically incorporates mountains into her work as a mural artist. The couple typically spend complete days snowboarding collectively. “Dwelling in Jackson, you type of should get good at snowboarding,” Ms. Badenhop stated. And so the concept of a ski marriage ceremony at Jackson Gap Mountain Resort was born, one thing that had by no means been accomplished earlier than on the high of Rendezvous Mountain, situated within the southern Teton Vary of the Rockies.

The couple and their visitors took a tram to the height and gathered on an expanse of snow. Ms. Badenhop’s niece, sporting a snowsuit with a tutu, threw dried flower petals as she walked down the snowy aisle. After exchanging vows, the couple turned into ski boots. “We stored our apparel on, and everyone cheered us on as we skied down,” she stated. “It’s a ‘black run,’ so I had worn a strapless backless costume, and I taped it to myself.”

The marriage get together skied or took the tram down for a champagne get together on the backside. It was every thing Mr. Leeper had dreamed of. “She’s snowboarding down in her marriage ceremony costume and prepared to do that with me — it’s going to be an awesome partnership for all times,” he stated.

As extra {couples} select daring marriage ceremony experiences, distributors are rising to the event. Brittany Hamilton, a photographer in Fort Collins, Colo., who makes a speciality of elopements, has been mountaineering for six years. Her proficiency in rope methods and scaling has uniquely intersected along with her profession in pictures.

“I at all times take my digital camera with me, and I realized the best way to ascend a static line to have the ability to shoot on the aspect of cliffs,” she stated. When Ms. Hamilton’s mountaineering associates started marrying, they expressed an curiosity in capturing that aspect of their relationships.

“I believe there’s one thing about climbing the place you’re actually trusting your life to your belay accomplice, your climbing accomplice, and that lends itself to relationships in lots of methods,” she stated.Ms. Hamilton makes certain that {couples} she works with have the required proficiency.

She stated that an elopement climb shouldn’t require a pair to push themselves. “Climbing in a costume provides this entire issue of billowing material round you,” she stated. “When you’re in your marriage ceremony apparel, we’ll in all probability be climbing on simpler stuff.”

However the realities of a mountaineering marriage ceremony — and all journey ceremonies — can lend themselves to candy marriage ceremony pictures: “moments of them gearing up, placing on their harnesses, double-checking one another’s knots,” Ms. Hamilton stated. One in all her favourite components to {photograph} is “if you’re climbing, earlier than you’re taking off from the bottom, you’re at all times double-checking that your accomplice is secure,” she added.

For Ariel Slusher-Miethe, 32, an journey marriage ceremony was a strategy to step outdoors her consolation zone. Earlier than assembly Alex Miethe at a Las Vegas nightclub they each labored at, she had by no means pictured herself marrying. However after their engagement, she started contemplating a marriage that might happen underwater — one other place she’d by no means imagined herself earlier than. She’d at all times been afraid of the ocean.

“Actually, it was type of like an ode to him,” she stated. “That is how a lot I like you — I’m going to face my fears and go underwater and scuba dive.”

Ms. Slusher-Miethe, an aesthetician, took scuba courses main as much as their underwater marriage ceremony, which befell in December 2019. They flew to Cozumel, Mexico, the place they dived beneath the aquamarine waves. The couple stated “I do” utilizing indicators, and their 15 visitors watched from above whereas snorkeling.

An unconventional venue can create distinctive logistical hurdles: The couple needed to tie the marriage rings to their packing containers. “Once you’re underwater, if the ring falls out, it could actually go anyplace,” Mr. Miethe, 35, an E.M.T., stated. “The kiss was laborious, too, since you’ve obtained to take out the regulator, maintain your breath, kiss actual fast and convey it again.”

Afterward, the couple took pictures whereas dancing and twirling underwater. Tania Nacif Iñigo, the photographer in Cozumel who shot their marriage ceremony, had realized to dive to complement her pictures virtually 30 years in the past. “You must be a complicated diver as a result of it’s a must to management your buoyancy, bear in mind of the present and be comfy together with your gear,” she stated. “Your life will depend on it.”

Capturing underwater weddings, which Ms. Nacif has accomplished about 10 occasions, permits her to mix her ardour for out of doors pictures along with her work as a marriage photographer.

For Mr. Miethe, a spotlight of the marriage was seeing his spouse overcoming her worry. “She’s nervous when she’s down there, however the second she will get up she’s like, ‘Oh my God, that was superb,’” he stated. “That was an superior factor to see, that transformation.”