Couple Gets Engaged on Special Eclipse Flight: 'I Wanted It to Be a Once-in-a-Lifetime Experience'
The groom-to-be popped the question on the flight from Austin, Texas to Detroit during Monday's solar eclipse
For a New York couple, the total solar eclipse was an unforgettable moment in their happily ever after.
While on a Delta Airlines flight from Austin, Texas, to Detroit during the eclipse on Monday, April 8, Neil Albstein created the "perfect" proposal for his now-fiancée Michele Rosenblatt.
The pair, with their fellow passengers, were thousands of feet in the air when the plane flew "along the path of totality." It was one of two Delta flights that, for the first time ever, mimicked the path of the total solar eclipse (a second left from Dallas and landed in Detroit at the same time), per a press release.
And Albstein was determined to make it even more magical.
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"The flight was such a special event. It seemed like I could never come up with anything else as special to propose to her. I wanted it to be a once-in-a-lifetime experience so it just seemed perfect to combine it," he told Reuters while at the gate after the plane landed. A beaming Rosenblatt stood by his side.
He continued, "Once the eclipse happened, because I knew I wasn't going to propose before the eclipse, once it happened my attention shifted and I started to get nervous."
In footage shared by the outlet, the future bride is seen teary-eyed as she accepts Albstein's proposal.
Albstein told the Detroit Free Press the proposal had been in the works for two months.
PEOPLE reached out to Delta Airlines and Albstein for comment.
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Hundreds of couples took advantage of the "once-in-a-lifetime" experience on Monday and tied the knot under the solar eclipse at the "Total Eclipse of the Heart" festival Russellville, Arkansas.
A wedding officiant was provided for free, along with decorations, flowers, a wedding cake and a sparkling fruit drink bottle to celebrate. The couples simply needed to show up with a marriage license and bring their own attire. The wedding ceremony concluded a few minutes before the solar eclipse reached “totality,” according to the event's website.
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One couple, Carlotta Cox and Matthew Holloway of Knoxville, Tennessee, told KATV they planned to travel over 500 miles just to be a part of the ceremony because it would be a one-of-a-kind story to tell.
"Being in the path of totality during a solar eclipse is just something," Cox said. "There's not an experience like it…”
"When totality hits, the cicadas come out, and then all the other animals, night animals, they’re starting to come out for a few minutes and then the temperature drops," Cox continued. "I don’t know how to explain the feeling that it gives you.”
He noted that the fact that it didn’t cost a dime didn’t hurt either, saying, "For us, it was really that it was a free wedding.”
Nearly 300 couples from across 22 states signed up for the mass wedding, organizer Rodney Williams told KATV.
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