The day my sister got married it rained so much that the church car park turned into a mud slide. It was so wet that they had to post-pone the wedding photos for another day, where we all turned up in our Sunday best and had cheerful family photos taken posing around some pine trees.
“It’s lucky to have rain on your wedding day”, everybody told my sister, which I suppose is true, given that she’s been married for more than 20 years and they seem a rather solid coupling.
If only ‘cloud bursting’ had existed on that rainy Saturday in 1990 in addition to all of that taffeta, my sister could have had perfect wedding weather.
That’s the sales pitch from Oliver’s Travels, a luxury travel company that specialise in destination wedding, which promises that “the only cloud at your wedding will be Cloud Nine”.
Prices start at around $200k for their crack team of wedding planners to play god by flying up meteorologists and pilots to sprinkle silver iodide particles over the clouds hovering over your (selective) French chateau venue, causing them to burst and vanish.
As The Telegraph reports, the technique has been used at the Beijing Olympics, at a Paul McCartney concert and at the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s wedding.
The technique was developed by a US chemist called Vincent Schaefer in the 1940s, who presumably had more noble causes in mind for his creation.
The company take their job of creating the ‘perfect day’ awfully seriously, stating on their website,
“One thing always bugged us – we can help plan everything down to the last detail, but there was one thing we could never really change: The weather.
“So we decided to do something about that.
“We’re proud and just a little bit excited to be able to offer an exclusive ‘cloud-bursting’ service to our customers, 100 per cent guaranteeing fair weather and clear skies for when you tie the knot!”
Which kind of makes sense when you consider just how bonkers the wedding industry(according to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission the average Australian weddings cost $36K, with industry figures putting the figure at between $45-50 k) has become. We’re so hell bent on making this one day of our lives ‘perfect’ that there is a now a market for meddling with the weather patterns.
The focus on the perfect day aspect leaves behind the reason that you’re there. To get married, to make a vow to stick with your partner through good, bad and inclement days.
And if you can’t handle a few rain clouds then, well, things aren’t off to a great start.
