Some wedding crashers show up for free food and drinks, but this one was a whole lot more literal and even more unwelcome: Dillon and Riley Murphy were getting ready to tie the knot at Hulihe'e Palace in Kailua-Kona on Saturday when a wall of waves came rushing in.
The waves toppled tables and chairs as guests scurried away from the water. Sara Ackerman, who attended the wedding, filmed the waves as they crashed the event.
"It just was huge," she told the Associated Press. "I was filming it and then it just came over the wall and just completely annihilated all the tables and chairs."
Video from another angle shows most of the guests unaware of the impending splashdown until right before the waves crashed over the wall.
WARNING: VIDEO CONTAINS EXPLICIT LANGUAGE
The waves were over 12 or 15 feet, which is extremely rare for the area, National Weather Service Meteorologist Chris Brenchley told the AP.
Ackerman said the incident happened about five minutes before the ceremony was set to begin. The wedding continued as planned and afterward, the guests came together to clean up the mess.
"We had the ceremony and it was beautiful, having all the (sea) spray. The ocean was really wild. So it was great for the photos," she told the AP.
Some guests got wet but no injuries were reported. Even the wedding cake was spared.
The Murphys told KHON it was hardly the wedding they envisioned, but the waves made it even more memorable.
"We didn't have our dance floor, but nobody seemed to mind, at the end of the night we were all, like, dancing in the mud and it was amazing," Riley said. "The show still went on and it was … a really, really fun night.”
Riley added that the waves taught her a lesson that a storm might hit in life, but it's important to come together.
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