Cemetery weddings find new life thanks to 'positive death' moment

It is 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 eternal bond by marrying in a cemetery.

Cemetery weddings are nothing new. Jews living in Eastern Europe and in the US 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 US, Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California, became a popular site for weddings after it opened in 1906. In 1940, actor-turned-US President Ronald Reagan chose it as the venue for his marriage to his first wife, actress Jane Wyman.

For most of the 20th century, though, cemeteries were cordoned off in the American imagination as morbid spaces one did not 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.

"Every year, we get more and more requests," said Mr Richard Harker, executive director of the foundation that operates the Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta. He said that in 2023, Oakland hosted 36 weddings and 25 funerals.

But holding a cemetery wedding does present challenges that marrying in a hotel ballroom or chapel might not.

The decision can be deeply personal. This was the case for Ms Sabrina Gandara, 38, of Portland, Oregon, who works in a retirement community.

In 2019, she married Mr Andrew Rodriguez, 37, a service writer for a car dealership, while standing over the grave of her grandfather, Mr Joe Gandara II, at the Fairhaven Memorial Park in Santa Ana, California.