Wedding at 32,000 feet is a first for Southwest Airlines

DALLAS — At 32,000 feet, somewhere over Arkansas, Southwest Airlines hosted something it hasn't done in nearly a decade — and something that it has never been able to do on a longer flight out of Dallas Love Field.

"How many of you thought you were going to a wedding today?," asked Ana Schwager, Southwest's community affairs and grassroots manager, over the intercom of Flight 4058 as the airliner soared west.

Not long after climbing out of Nashville on Sunday afternoon, a 4-year-old flower girl named Sydney passed out peanuts on the crowded Dallas-bound jet.

Moments later, as music played, Dottie Coven danced down the aisle in her white wedding dress and veil to marry Keith Stewart.

"A lot of things around flying tend to not be fun," she said. "Let's make it fun again!"

"We are gathered here today — whether you intended to or not — to celebrate the wedding of Dottie Coven and Keith Stewart," said the officiant.

The front of a 737 is a tight squeeze for a wedding.

"If anyone can show just cause why they may not be lawfully joined together let them push their flight attendant call button now," the officiant said, adding to laughs in the cabin.

The couple read vows from their mobile phones as everyone else used their own to capture the moment.

"I, Dottie, choose you Keith, to be my husband in front of our friends, our family, and random but very special guests," she said.

On board were 141 passengers, many of whom inadvertently became wedding guests.

Perhaps most remarkable is that Keith and Dottie have accumulated more than a million Rapid Rewards points since they travel so much for work. They were able to trade in most of them in exchange for 30 tickets on this flight for family and friends who got to witness the ceremony sitting in seat belts.

"I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss your bride," the officiant said.

It was a unique union that occurred six miles high on the two-hour flight.

Coven, 44, and Stewart, 38, live near Louisville and met two years ago on a dating website. She's in sales and he's in IT and their jobs take them across the country.

"We were literally sitting at a gate in Baltimore, waiting for a flight and just thinking what should we do? And we thought, 'What about getting married on a plane?,'" Coven said.

Stewart wrote a letter asking Southwest if it would host such an event.

The airline agreed and chose the first non-stop flight from Nashville to Dallas Love Field for the wedding.

Southwest recently became able to fly directly between the two cities and many others after the phase-out of the Wright Amendment, which had previously restricted flights from Dallas Love Field to Texas and several nearby states.

Schwager, the Southwest community affairs and grassroots manager, said she couldn't think of a better way for Southwest to ring in the first Dallas-Nashville flight than with wedding bells.

"Dottie and Keith wrote a letter to Southwest saying, 'Hey, we want to do our wedding, we want to do it non-traditional … can we get married on an aircraft?' " Schwager said. "So, of course, we loved that idea and knew that we had the perfect flight to Dallas Love Field."

Since Coven and Stewart chose Southwest for the wedding, the airline has agreed to send the couple on a honeymoon to one of its newer destinations: Puerto Rico.

Contributing: Collin Czarnecki of The Tennessean newspaper of Nashville.

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