Moonstruck Missouri Couple To Marry Under Solar Eclipse

KANSAS CITY, MO — “Dark Side of the Moon” is on the wedding reception playlist for a suburban Kansas City couple who planned to get married during the total solar eclipse Monday. Joe Parker and Donna Todd have been engaged for almost three years but decided to wait for the alignment of the sun and moon to formalize their own.

They’re getting married in Independence, Missouri, which will experience only about a minute of totality, so there’s not much wiggle room for wedding snafus. They plan to have exchanged their vows by the time the moon covers the sun so their guests can view the eclipse.

Their black and white wedding attire will symbolize light and dark, they’re getting eclipse-themed tattoos around their ring fingers and all guests will get certified solar glasses so they can view the eclipse without damaging their retinas. (Sign up for free morning newsletters and real-time news alerts from Kansas City Patch, and click here to find your local Missouri Patch. If you have an iPhone, click here to get the free Patch iPhone app.)

Waiting nearly three years after they became engaged for an eclipse-themed wedding was an easy decision for the couple. She’s all about the moon, and he’s partial to the sun.

“We both love the stars and planets, all that,” Todd told KCTV in Kansas City. “It fits us perfect.”

Parker thinks he and Todd, who have known each other for more than 20 years, were guided to each other by the universe. “I think there’s more to it than the moon passing over the sun,” he said.

AP Photo/File