A rocky start? Rockslide crashes Utah wedding
Thankfully, nobody was hurt in the incident.
Wedding crasher, indeed.
That’s what witnesses are saying after a rockslide disrupted a Utah wedding elopement ceremony on March 31.
During the ring exchange, guests were startled by a thunderous roar and a cloud of dust rising from the hills behind them.
“...Just brought my car to a wedding for them to use in pictures in Ivins, Utah and this happened!” Shane Schieve, who was at the scene, said on Facebook alongside a video of the rockslide.
“Talk about a wedding crasher!”
Schieve told KSL the group initially thought the noise was from a low-flying jet due to its volume.
Lois Valdez, the wedding photographer, said the rockslide seemed to happen “out of nowhere.”
"What made it even crazier was that right before it happened, the officiant had been talking about the mountains," Valdez told the news outlet.
The officiant had been giving gratitude to the land and respect to the Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah.
Valdez said the event turned a calm event into something unexpected and exciting.
“It was perfect."
Another attendee had a different take.
"My mother said, 'I hope it doesn’t mean they’re gonna have a rocky marriage,'” Schieve told Reuters.
Small rockslides, or rockfalls, are a near-daily occurrence in Utah due to its steep and mountainous terrain, according to the Utah Geological Survey.
“Rockfalls may be triggered by freeze/thaw action, rainfall, changes in groundwater conditions, weathering and erosion of the rock and/or surrounding material, and root growth,” the survey writes on its website.
“Although not well documented, rockfalls in Utah appear to occur more frequently during spring and summer months, likely due to spring snowmelt, summer cloudburst storms, and large daily temperature variations.”