A couple takes to Mount Everest to make wedding special

To what extent one could go to make their wedding day special and memorial for long time, this could be gauged by a story of a couple from California who took their love to new heights by getting married at summit of Mount Everest.

James Sissom, 35, and Ashley Schmieder, 32 spent a year planning the trip and had to bear below freezing temperatures and a three week trek to make their way to the location. They exchanged vows at 17,000 feet above sea level.

“After much deliberation, we decided a traditional wedding was not the right fit for us. As much as we would have loved to share our special day with our family and friends, we were both drawn to the idea of eloping during an incredible vacation”, said Schmieder while speaking to a foreign newspaper.

“We both are avid lovers of the outdoors and had experience at altitude up to 14,000 feet, but we knew the three week Everest Base Camp trek would be far more physically and mentally demanding than anything we’ve experienced.”

While the wedding was unconventional, the couple donned traditional wedding clothes — Sissom donned a black tux and Schmieder wore a strapless white wedding dress.

The wedding was documented by Charleton Churchill who is a specialist adventure wedding photographer. “I wanted to portray the contrast that exists between the intimidatingly majestic mountains and the small, fragile love between two humans”, said Churchill while speaking to a foreign news paper.

The temperatures made it hard for the pictures to be taken. “Your hands would quickly freeze if left out of the gloves,” he said. At one point, Churchill’s camera equipment stopped functioning because it was too cold. “There’s no glory without suffering,” Churchill wrote on his blog. “We worked hard for these images with much less time to photograph a short wedding than we planned.”

The bride wearing a strapless gown had to especially focus on keeping herself warm due to the frigid weather. The conditions for the wedding shoot were not desirable but the pictures turned out to be breathtaking.

Here are the pictures of couple who tied a knot at peak of Mount of Everest.