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With this fry, I thee wed: Couples can marry at McDonald’s

If McDonald’s has its way, the traditional white wedding arch will be replaced by the golden ones. Some of the fast-food chain’s restaurants in Hong Kong are now allowing customers to “supersize” their order to include McNuptials.
/ Source: TODAY contributor

If McDonald’s has its way, the traditional white wedding arch will be replaced by the golden ones. Some of the fast-food chain’s restaurants in Hong Kong are now allowing customers to “supersize” their order to include McNuptials.

The fast-food chain is offering up its restaurants for wedding ceremonies and receptions, and far from being a sign of the apocalypse, it’s actually making many couples’ dreams come true. A company spokeswoman notes that, given the ubiquity of the chain, many couples had their first dates, fell in love and even had their marriage proposals take place at McDonald’s, so “it makes it particularly meaningful and memorable to hold a wedding party there,” she said in a statement.

The idea hatched when a couple who met and dated at the Admiralty branch of McDonald’s in Hong Kong held their wedding there. Once word got out that McDonald’s was in the wedding business, they were deluged with calls, and the chain began accepting wedding bookings at three restaurants in the region, according to McDonald’s Hong Kong director of corporate communications and relations Helen Cheung.

The chain is now taking bookings for January 2011 weddings.

So what do you get with a McDonald’s wedding? Well, bride and groom get to cut a cake made out of a tower of McDonald’s apple pies; celebrants get to order off the tried-and-true McDonald’s menu; and guests receive party favors in the form of Happy Meal toys. The bride and her attendants can even opt for wedding dresses made out of McDonald’s party balloons.

And in great news for any father of the bride, a McDonald’s wedding only costs a few hundred American dollars.

Still, there are some things you don’t get, chief among them, exclusivity. The three McDonald’s franchises in Hong Kong won’t shut down their restaurants for weddings, so regular folks will be ordering their Chicken McNuggets as vows are exchanged. McDonald’s franchises also don’t carry liquor licenses, so a strawberry shake or a soda has to stand in for a champagne toast.

There’s no word from McDonald’s world headquarters on whether the world-famous fast-food chain plans to officially expand its wedding business to America. But unofficially, it already has.

In 2005, an Irwin, Pa., couple married at the local McDonald’s drive-through. The groom met his bride when he ordered from his car and fell in love with the drive-through lady, headset and all. And sure enough, the bride was behind the drive-through counter as they married, sliding her hand through the window as her groom slipped the wedding ring on her finger from his auto.

In 2006, a Fairborn, Ohio, couple who fell in love when they worked side by side at the local McDonald’s had their wedding in that very same restaurant as puzzled customers looked on. A year later, a Bismarck, N.D., couple, who ate at the exact same McDonald’s table each week while they dated, figured they wouldn’t switch up their routine and also had their nuptials there.

But sometimes, the fast-food wedding world turns topsy-turvy: Last year in Kentucky, a couple named Kurby and Krystal McDonald went the fast-food wedding route — but they chose White Castle.