It’s Halloween evening. You have decided to take a walk through a park before a night of trick-or-treating. During your stroll, you stumble across an intimate wedding ceremony.

The closer you get to the ceremony, the more you realize this isn’t a typical wedding. All of the guests are fully dressed in Halloween costumes, but your eyes aren’t on the guests.

You are drawn straight to the bride and groom. You don’t see the typical white wedding gown and tux. Instead, you see an attractive woman covered in silver body paint. The only “clothing” on her body is strategically placed leaves in all of the appropriate places. The groom appears to be dressed like a leprechaun.

You might be thinking this would never happen, but it did. The fairy tale-themed Halloween wedding is one of the many unusual weddings Bonnie Rosa-Mosena has planned throughout the years. Rosa-Mosena, certified wedding planner of Perfect Events in Clive, said this particular wedding took place more than 10 years ago.

“Everyone had to come in costumes to the wedding,” Rosa-Mosena said. “The bride and groom loved Halloween. They were really into fairies and fairy tales, so she wanted to look like a nymph. It had the ‘wow’ factor.”

A wedding like this one isn’t going to be for everyone. However, if couples are looking to have a slightly nontraditional wedding, choosing a different venue might be a plausible option. Rosa-Mosena said that choosing an atypical location or venue is one way for couples to be a little different and show their personalities.

“As a planner it’s my job to do whatever the bride and groom want,” Rosa-Mosena said. “Some people have the strangest requests.”

Here’s a little taste of some of the more unusual venues and ways to get married.

Have your ceremony underwater

A rather nontraditional wedding venue for Rosa-Mosena was underwater in the ocean. Seems impossible, doesn’t it? It’s not.

“The couple loved the Bahamas and snorkeling. So we had the wedding in the Bahamas,” Rosa-Mosena said.

A smaller bridal party waited on the beach, while the bride, groom and a pastor performed the official ceremony underwater.

Tie the knot at a doughnut store

Even though many of the more unusual wedding venues take place outside, that is not always the case. In Portland, Ore., a local doughnut store chain doubles as a wedding chapel. Voodoo Doughnuts’ employees work as wedding officiates and can perform legal weddings in all three of their locations in Portland.

The stores offer a variety of wedding packages, starting at an “intentional commitment,” a non-legal ceremony without doughnuts or coffee. The remaining packages all include a legal ceremony and other extras from the use of their Chapel, doughnut centerpieces, catered doughnuts and coffee for guests, to full airfare to Portland with hotel accommodations and a tour.

Sara Heise, executive wrangler and wedding coordinator at Voodoo Doughnuts, estimated that the stores perform between 40 and 60 weddings a year. And she says that Halloween is one of their busiest times for weddings. “We already have eight couples getting married on Halloween day this year,” Heise said.

Every wedding at Voodoo Doughnut begins by the officiate “evoking the voodoo spirits” to see if the couple should be married. Heise said the store needs a sign from the voodoo gods above to approve the marriage. Next, each ceremony has the standard wedding vows. During the end of the ceremony, a broom is placed on the ground in front of the bride and groom, and the couple jumps the broom to start their honeymoon, Heise said.

Even cats can get married at Voodoo Doughnuts

“There was a cat show in town and some customers requested their cats get married,” Heise said.

She said the cats were even dressed up as a bride and groom. Who was the officiate for the wedding, you might ask? A Voodoo Doughnut employee that goes by Kat Meow.

Get hitched in Vegas, but not at a little chapel

During her years as a wedding planner, Rosa-Mosena has planned two separate weddings in Sin City. She said one was an Elvis-themed wedding, where the couple had their ceremony at an Elvis convention.

“There were multiple Elvis’ at the wedding, skinny and fat,” Rosa-Mosena remembered. “The bride was crazy about that stuff.”

A more challenging wedding that Rosa-Mosena planned in Las Vegas was a Renaissance-themed wedding. She said that the couple didn’t want any part of their wedding to be modern, so Rosa-Mosena said she had to do lots of research.

“Everyone had to dress in Renaissance clothing; I even had to rent a costume,” she said.

Everything about the wedding had to be authentic to the Renaissance era, including the music, games, decorations and even the lack of silverware.

Spend your special day at the zoo

Maybe you don’t have the budget to travel to Portland or Las Vegas for your wedding, but you still want to do something a little different when you get married. You can always have your wedding at the Blank Park Zoo in Des Moines.

Couples can choose to have their ceremony, reception or both at the zoo during certain times of the year. Blank Park Zoo has both indoor and outdoor facilities, and offers couples different packages for their wedding. For example, the “lion package” includes a location for the ceremony, reception, dinner, dancing and a buffet. The more expensive packages give couples the option to use the entire zoo, allowing them to walk around and view the exhibits on their special day.

Pulling off an unusual wedding

Typically, these weddings involve extra planning and work. Rosa-Mosena explained that most of the destination weddings she’s planned consist of a small bridal party for the ceremony on location, and then a larger reception back at home. “It requires double planning,” Rosa-Mosena said. “I’m planning the reception at home with the friends and family, on top of the unusual request.”

For the underwater wedding, Rosa-Mosena said she had to obtain rights to have the wedding at the location and find a pastor willing to perform a wedding ceremony underwater.

Another wedding that required some extra legwork for Rosa-Mosena was for a couple whose wedding wish was to be married on an active volcano in Hawaii.

“They were geologists. Their ceremony was right on the edge of the volcano,” she remembered.

This wedding was more difficult to plan because the volcano was in a national park, so the couple had to gain permission to be married there.

It doesn’t have to cost a fortune

Even though some of these weddings might have been fairly expensive, Rosa-Mosena mentioned that getting married in a special location doesn’t always mean extra money.

“It depends on what the couple wants,” she said. “If you want to get married in the Bahamas, it might cost more.”

However, she said there are plenty of cool things that couples can do without spending a lot of money. “We work with couples to create a budget and really focus on staying within the budget for the event.”

Or, couples can always get married at Voodoo Doughnuts, where “The Whole Shebang” package — including a legal wedding ceremony, airfare to Portland, hotel accommodations and a tour — costs a total of $4,500. Not too bad for a destination wedding.