Remember when a woman married a building? Or when an Australian woman decided a bridge in France was “the One?”
Well it seems marriage can mean anything these days and this latest example proves it.
Houston, TX native Yasmin Eleby always said that if she didn’t find true love by the time she turned 40, she’d marry herself. And, it wasn’t joke. She wanted to celebrate how much she loved herself.
"I decided I didn't want it to be a joke. I wanted to have a celebration of myself. My wedding was going to be about me making a commitment to love myself, to honor myself and to know my self-worth," she told ABC News.
When her 40th birthday came around Jan. 3, she eagerly celebrated that vow by hosting a lavish wedding at the Houston Museum of African American Culture with 160 members of her family and friends in attendance. She walked down the aisle to Stevie Wonder’s “Isn’t She Lovely?” before reciting her vows to herself. At the end of the ceremony, Eleby sang “I believe I can fly” and there was “barely a dry eye in the room” according to ABC News.
The wedding planner said he organized seats at the wedding to form a circle, so Eleby would always be “the center of attention.” During the ceremony, family members called out, “Who thinks Yasmin is 40 and fabulous?” While the guests responded, “We do!”
Since marrying oneself is not a legal tradition, her minister’s sister officiated the event.
Stranger marriages have occurred.
In 2013, an Australian musician named Jodi Rose married Le Pont du Diable Bridge in Ceret, France and even got the mayor’s blessing. Describing her “husband” Rose gushed,
“He makes me feel connected to the earth and draws me to rest from my endless nomadic wanderings. He is fixed, stable, rooted to the ground, while I am nomadic, transient, ever on the road. He gives me a safe haven, brings me back to ground myself, and then lets me go again to follow my own path, without trying to keep me tied down or in thrall to his needs or desires. I am devoted to him.”
In Jan. of 2012 a Seattle woman married a warehouse set for demolition and then, just a few months later, informed the city council that she’ll be marrying a local neighborhood after the warehouse was demolished, anyway.
In 2008, a San Francisco woman with a bizarre fetish for objects married the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
C'est la vie.