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HOUSTON - The bride blew the groom a kiss. He blew one back - from about 240 miles above terra firma.
Russian astronaut Yuri Malenchenko didn't let the fact that he's living aboard the international space station stop him from marrying his earthbound bride, Ekaterina Dmitriev, in the first wedding ever conducted from space.
The couple wed Sunday before family and friends in a private ceremony at Johnson Space Center in Houston, where Malenchenko took part via video. Texas law allows weddings in which one of the parties is not present.
A life-size cutout of the groom greeted guests at the reception, at a restaurant decorated with mannequins dressed as astronauts.
The honeymoon will have to wait until after Malenchenko, who wore a bow tie with his blue space suit, returns to Earth in late October. They plan a Russian Orthodox wedding next year.
Dmitriev, who wore a cream-colored wedding dress, said the two had grown closer during their time apart, making them want to marry as soon as possible.
"As Yuri was further away, he was closer to me because of the communication we have," said Dmitriev, who turned 27 Friday. "It was a celestial, soulful connection that we have."
The two met at a social gathering five years ago and began dating last year.
He is a Russian air force colonel who stayed aboard space station Mir for four months in 1994. She left Russia for the United States with her parents when she was 3 and lives in Houston.
After their relationship began, Malenchenko, 41, returned to Russia to train for his space mission, but the two continued their courtship via telephone. The astronaut proposed in December.
Because Malenchenko was preparing for his mission and there was no time to plan a wedding, they decided to get married while he was still in space. The couple was issued a marriage license July 17.
Malenchenko, who blasted off to the station in late April with American astronaut Edward Lu, quietly arranged to have his tail coat and wedding ring flown to him aboard a cargo ship that arrived at the station in June. Lu served as his best man during Sunday's ceremony, and even performed the wedding march on a keyboard in the space station.
In Russia on Sunday, Malenchenko's father, Ivan, told the state-run television channel Rossiya that the space wedding had made the astronaut's mother, Nina, cry and said, "What is this needed for - a sensation for the whole world?" His parents are pensioners in a Ukrainian village.
But Malenchenko's brother laughed and said his sibling will now be famous.