Rockport, Texas - I first met Ralph Stuart, a somewhat restless British fellow with a questionable sense of humour, through mutual friends while working for the Polish news service Fakt. We shared similar backgrounds, and Stuart and I became good friends right away.

Time moved on, as it often does, and we lost contact. But eventually, I received a telegram from Stuart explaining that he had moved to New Guinea and offering an open invitation for me to visit and spend time at his estate, should I ever be in that part of the world.

In January of 1989 I found myself between assignments. Needing a rest I decided to accept Stuart’s offer.

The timing of my visit was not the best, for just after my arrival an unfortunate trajedy struck Stuart’s family - a trajedy that culminated in a most bizarre occurrence.

Stuart had a young daughter who was engaged to be married. But death unexpectedly robbed Francine of her fiance.

In her grief, she made the decision to go ahead with the ceremony as planned - with her husband-to-be lying stone-cold dead in his coffin.

In a truly bizarre ceremony, the heart- broken bride was united in holy matrimony with the corpse of the man she loved.

Two days after my arrival, Cornelius Hawking was killed when a truck he was driving went out of control and plunged off a mountain road.

“Francine wanted to bear Cornelius’ name, and she felt he would have wanted that too,” explained Harold Hawking, the groom’s grieving father. “We could see no reason to refuse her request. We though it would help in dealing with the terrible mourning over her tragic loss.”

The wedding took place in the Evangelical Lutheran Church at Port Moresby, where the couple had first met and worshiped together.

The young bride wore a full gown and veil, and stood next to the coffin in front of the pulpit.

As weeping relatives and friends looked on, Francine repeated her vows and slipped a gold wedding ring onto the grooms cold stiff finger. She then lovingly kissed her corpse groom, whispered a few words of love, and closed the casket for eternity.

After the wedding, my friend escorted his daughter from the church to the small cemetery outside, where the newly-married Cornelius was laid to rest in a touching funeral ceremony.

“I have never heard of a marriage such as this, but I couldn’t refuse when the bride and grooms family asked me to perform the services,” said pastor Rutchie Mendenez. “It was a memorial to the deep love these two young people had for one another. It was a symbolic way of demonstrating that love can conquer death.”

Some of the guests who attended the macabre ceremony didn’t know of the grooms death until they arrived at the church. A few were so filled with horror over the proceedings they left the chapel immediately.

But most of the people who watched Francine repeat her vows felt deep sympathy with the grief-stricken bride.

“She and Cornelius were inseparable in life, so I see nothing wrong with honoring that bond after his death,” a close friend of the family said.

Francine stated she had no plans of marrying again, saying she had loved Cornelius ever since she met him ten years ago.

She couldn’t conceive the notion of death coming between them - and said she is convinced that now it never will.

Francine arranged with the pastor to leave the phrase until death do us part out of her marriage vows.

Godfroi Buillon exclusive for Our Strange World