Thousands of couples took part in a mass wedding yesterday by South Korea’s Unification Church, with the widow of church founder Sun Myung Moon presiding over the event at a giant stadium, reports AFP.
Three thousand identically-dressed couples from 62 countries, including
1,000 new couples and 2,000 already-married pairs, participated in the three-
hour ceremony at Gapyeong which hosts the South Korean headquarters of the church.
Mass weddings, often held in sports stadiums with tens of thousands of couples, have long been a signature feature of the church founded by Moon in 1954.
Moon’s widow Han Hak-Ja urged the followers to make the utmost efforts to
complete the mission to “build heaven on Earth” by the year 2020.
Blake Matthews and his bride Kieva Pace, both 24 and from North Carolina, said they had been together for eight years since they met in high school.
Matthews said he wanted to take back “this sense of community with people
who don’t even really know each other”.
”Everyone’s still kind of a family,” he said.
The newly-wed couple said they planned to go on a honeymoon trip to the southern island of Jeju.
Moon died in September 2012, aged 92, of complications from pneumonia.
Revered by his followers but denounced by critics as a charlatan who brainwashed church members, Moon was a deeply divisive figure.