Pet owners have spent up to 20,000 pounds marrying their loved up pets, according to an animal registrar
Ann Clark charges 150 pounds a time to join paws in marriage, but she said that besotted owners have spent thousands on chauffeur-driven cars, nibbles and even a professional photographer for their four-legged friend’s special day, a major newspaper reported.
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Clark, 55, has conducted seven ceremonies in a pagoda in her back garden in Desborough, Northamptonshire.
As well as weddings between different species and siblings, she also offers a same-sex “civil ceremony” – although she draws the line at marrying owners to their pets.
There is of course no legal basis in the marriage, and Clark is not officially a registrar. While there is no religious nature to the weddings, she does, naturally, wear a dog collar to perform them.
While most of those joined in holy matrimony are dogs, she has wed plenty of cats too, while her most recent union involved two rabbits.
The couple, Chrissie Boy and Ellie, owned by schoolfriends Summer Clark and Holly-Ann Adcock, both nine, enjoyed a wedding breakfast of carrots following the 15-minute service.
Owners are encouraged to write their own vows for their pets, while all animals taking part in the services receive a certificate confirming their “marriage.”
A typical pet wedding starts with a champagne breakfast at Clark’s house for human guests – while the bridal party enjoy milk and water.
As the service begins, the bride is walked or carried over a bridge to the pagoda in the centre of the garden, where the groom is waiting.
After they have been pronounced husband and wife, they have their photographs taken for the wedding album – before tucking into a huge bowl of treats to celebrate.
“The basic ceremony fee includes using the wedding venue in my garden,” Clark, 55, who also runs a cattery, Kitz Katz, from her countryside bungalow, said.
“But people usually want to spend a lot more than that - they often ask if they can hire caterers, and employ a professional wedding photographer to capture their special day,” she added.
“The actual wedding days are lovely - it’s beautiful when you see animals that clearly adore each other being joined together.
“The owners can get very emotional too - there are often a lot of guests and it’s a lovely day out for everyone, just like a human wedding,” she said.
But Clark admitted that after having a fairytale wedding some pets find marriage difficult.
“Sadly, we’ve had one cat who was widowed, after her husband was run over by a car. Her owner called to say how devastated she was.
“We’ve also sadly had one divorce; the owners called up a few months after the wedding to tell us the animals had grown apart.
“That has been our only divorce,” she said.u00a0
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