You could say it was a case of love at first dive when Patrick Russell and Melanie Ilemsky met at a skydiving drop zone in the US. They dated for 2 years and recently, they decided to take the leap and make it official. It was a wedding with a bit of a difference. Patrick and Melanie were joined by 9 of their closest friends and family members on a hot air balloon and celebrated their big day by completing a sky dive from the balloon itself. They both joined Ray D’Arcy on the line to tell him how it came about.

Patrick is originally from Kilworth in Cork but has been living in America for the last 14 years. He met Melanie when he went to get his skydiving license and it quickly became clear this was the real deal.

“We just knew it was happening. We decided that we kind of wanted to be together and there was no real formal proposal…I said I wanted to be with you and it went from there.“

Melanie told Ray that a big traditional wedding was never on the cards for them.

“We didn’t want a big wedding and we didn’t want anything very traditional and we struggled with how do we have a ceremony and not hurt people’s feelings because, you know, we don’t want to invite a lot of people.”

They considered the idea of getting married in a small plane and then doing a jump together but worried it might not be the most matrimonial atmosphere.

“It’s really loud in the airplane. It’s not romantic. You kind of have to yell at each other to hear.”

They floated the idea of jumping from a hot air balloon instead. The much quieter journey would make it so they didn’t have to yell their vows at each other.

“That kind of took care of both the skydiving piece and the face that we could only invite a very small number of people because the biggest balloon we could find only fits 11 people.”

Patrick told Ray that when he broke the news to his mother about the location of the wedding, she seemed “excited” but perhaps not as thrilled as he had hoped.

“I later found out that she actually thought that she was going to have to jump from the balloon too.”

Melanie’s mother also got in on the action and became an ordained Minister so she could conduct the wedding for them.

“She became ordained just for us because I didn’t want some random Minster on the balloon with us. So, I asked her to get ordained so she could marry us.”

There’s video footage of the day, which has proved illuminating for both Patrick and Melanie. Even though they are both seasoned jumpers, the combination of wedding and diving nerves means that the video has been helping to fill in some blanks.

“We were really surprised when we saw the video that everyone was yelling for us because neither of us heard them yelling [on the day]…It’s really mind-boggling that your adrenaline’s pumping, your emotions are kind of flying around, pun intended…it was really wild.“

Amazing Footage Shows Adrenaline-Junkie Couple Skydive From Hot Air Balloon After Tying The Knot 👰🤵

Amazing Footage Shows Adrenaline-Junkie Couple Skydive From Hot Air Balloon After Tying The Knot 👰🤵Patrick Russell, 38, and Melanie Ilemsky, 36, decided to have an airborne wedding due to their shared love of skydiving.http://www.real-fix.com/relationships/amazing-footage-shows-adrenaline-junkie-couple-skydive-from-hot-air-balloon-after-tying-the-knot/

Posted by real fix on Monday, July 23, 2018

Despite the emotion of the day, Melanie still had time to analyse her form.

“As a very competitive skydiver at times, I was critical about my exit, it wasn’t as stable as it could have been. And Patrick‘s like, ‘relax’.“

Ray asked the question on everyone’s lips: what did they wear? While Patrick wore some slacks and a black shirt, Melanie did some minor alterations on the traditional white wedding dress.

“I knew it wouldn’t make sense to spend very much money on it because I don’t always stand up my landings so I only spent $20, I got it from Amazon and I had someone tailor it…so I that it wouldn’t interfere with me trying to pull my parachute.“

Listen back to the full interview on The Ray D’Arcy Show here.