Oddly Enough

The eccentric founder of the Virgin Group, Sir Richard Branson, is planning to set another record next year: he will officiate at the first wedding in space.

The 58-year-old billionaire adventurer stated that he plans to conduct the ceremony 70 miles above Earth on the first Virgin Galactic sub-orbital flight. Branson's ambitious Virgin Galactic company aims to give ordinary people the opportunity to be astronauts, starting with test flights this summer.

In January, Branson unveiled the SpaceShipTwo, a vehicle he believes will start a space tourism trend. It will attach itself to an aircraft until it reaches 50,000 feet, at which point it will blast into the outer atmosphere. Renowned astrophysicist Stephen Hawking-along with 200 others-has already booked a flight on the spaceship. A Virgin spokesperson said that there is also a plan for a honeymoon in space.

This is not the first offbeat wedding that Branson has officiated. Last year he obtained a 24-hour license from an online church to marry a Virgin employee and his bride on a flight to Las Vegas. Record-breaking is also familiar to Branson, who set a 1986 record for crossing the Atlantic in a powerboat and crossed the Pacific Ocean in a hot air balloon in 1991.