Hot-Air Balloon Wedding Crash Caught on Tape

A newlywed couple and 11 others braced for a crash landing.

ByABC News
January 8, 2013, 7:08 AM

Jan. 8, 2013 — -- It was supposed to have been a romantic sunset wedding in a hot-air balloon for Kerin and Jonathan Narcisse. But romance quickly turned to fear as the couple and 11 others, including their wedding party and the balloon's operator, braced for a crash landing.

One moment Kerin and Jonathan were exchanging their wedding vows, thousands of feet in the air, the next, the newlyweds were on their sides, stranded, in a stranger's backyard. A member of the wedding party recorded the crash on her cellphone.

The newlyweds had no idea what was happening.

"A couple times he tried to land, we floated over," Jonathan Narcisse said. "We kept missing landing spots. Next thing you know, we're descending and I'm thinking, 'How is he going to land here, because there's no place to land.'"

The balloon hit a fence, skidded through some trees, and then stopped.

"I got a little worried when we hit the fence and I thought, 'Well, if the fence doesn't stop us then we're going down this hill,'" Kerin Narcisse said.

Making the ordeal all the more terrifying, the bride's dream of a mid-air wedding was actually the groom's worst nightmare, as it turns out. He's scared of heights.

"I am," he said. "Terrified."