It’s right there in the vows uttered at innumerable weddings each year: “Till death do us part.” So it should come as no surprise that some couples want to highlight their (hopefully) eternal bond by marrying in a cemetery.
Cemetery weddings are nothing new. Jews living in Eastern Europe and in the United States sometimes held weddings in cemeteries during times of mass disease, like during the 1918 influenza, in the belief that having the ceremony in the presence of the dead might bring about better times.
In the United States, Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, Calif., became a popular site for weddings after it opened in 1906. In 1940, Ronald Reagan chose it as the venue for his marriage to his first wife, the actress Jane Wyman.
For most of the 20th century, though, cemeteries were cordoned off in the American imagination as morbid spaces one didn’t visit unless necessary. This has changed with the recent “positive death” movement, which has sought to remake the cemetery as a place of exploration, and even celebration.
ImageThe chapel at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Omaha has held numerous weddings.Credit...AP Photo/The Omaha World-Herald/Matt Miller“Every year, we get more and more requests,” said Richard Harker, the executive director of the foundation that operates the Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta. He said that last year Oakland hosted 36 weddings and 25 funerals.
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