The 1st Man To Get Married From Space.

Cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko

The "space wedding" on Sunday might land cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko in the record books, but it has upset his parents, who only found out about his unorthodox nuptials at the last minute from a friend.

The news that Malenchenko, 41-year-old commander of the International Space Station (news - web sites), was to marry his earth-bound bride some 240 vertical miles away later Sunday, took his parents Nina and Ivan by surprise.

"We do not understand this and think it should not be like this. It's strange because the groom will not be at his own wedding," Nina Malenchenko told Reuters.

"Today our friend phoned us and said that it is happening after reading the paper," she said Saturday.

Malenchenko, ISS commander since April, overcame technical and legal problems as well as the objections of his bosses to wed U.S. citizen Ekaterina Dmitriev, 26, from space by telephone, and become the first man to get married from space.

Yahoo