Total eclipse of the heart: 300 couples get hitched in mass Arkansas wedding as moon blots out sun
It’s a total eclipse of the heart.
More than 300 couples tied the knot during a mass wedding ceremony in Russellville, Arkansas on Monday to mark the solar eclipse.
The couples said “I Do” in a field at a free Elope at the Eclipse event just moments before the moon blotted out the sun Monday afternoon.
“It just seems like the coolest wedding that you could ever have,” one bride, Carlotta Cox, told the local 40/29 News outlet ahead of her nuptials.
While some opted for traditional wedding gowns and suits for the unusual nuptials, others were spotted wearing medieval attire as they exchanged rings.
A huge cheer erupted in the field as the mass celebrant declared them all legally wed.
One groom could be seen immediately whipping out his eclipse glasses in preparation for the incoming totality.
Cox and her fiancé, Matthew Holloway, who hail from Knoxville, Tennessee, said they had been planning an eclipse wedding for two years.
“Our original destination was Maine. The totality there is like two minutes, and then we were looking for something where the totality was longer, and it was here in Arkansas,” Cox said.
Russellville, which was ranked by NASA as one of the best places in the US to watch the eclipse, was expected to be in the eclipse’s path of totality for roughly four minutes.
Katie Baucom, who wed her partner Nicholas Blackwell during the eclipse event, described her nuptials as a “once in a lifetime type thing.”
“It’s something big. We never really had anything big or major happen to either one of us,” she said.
Everything to know about the 2024 solar eclipse
- The solar eclipse will take place Monday, April 8, blocking the sun for over 180 million people in its path.
- The eclipse will expand from Mexico’s Pacific Coast across North America, hitting 15 US states and pulling itself all the way to the coast of Newfoundland, Canada.
- New Yorkers will experience the solar eclipse just after 2 p.m. Monday.
- A huge explosion on the sun, known as a coronal mass ejection, is anticipated, according to experts. This happens when massive particles from the sun are hurled out into space, explains Ryan French of the National Solar Observatory in Boulder, Colorado.
- To avoid serious injury to the eyes, it is necessary to view the event through proper eyewear like eclipse glasses, or a handheld solar viewer, during the partial eclipse phase before and after totality.
- The next total solar eclipse will take place on Aug. 12, 2026, and totality will be visible to those in Greenland, Iceland, Spain, Russia and a small slice of Portugal.
“It’s a great experience, I wish it could last for a longer time,” another groom told ABC News.
“It was a perfect conclusion to our new lives. The sun and the moon and the earth have become one,” he added.
One of the grooms, Keegan, had earlier told ABC’s “Good Morning America that it took some convincing to get his partner, Courtney, to agree.
“She was wanting something a little more traditional and, it took a while, but I finally convinced her to get married in the eclipse,” he said.
Organizers said couples had flocked from at least 25 states — including New York — to wed at the Russellville event.
The hundreds of couples all cut wedding cakes, toasted champagne and celebrated with their first dance in the wake of the eclipse.
The shadow of the moon continued to glide across the US, dimming the Sun for millions of Americans living in the solar eclipse’s path of totality, Monday afternoon.
A couple of hundred million others were bearing witness to a partial eclipse.
