Want to get married underwater with Christ as your witness? Amoray Dive Resort can make it happen

An essay contest is under way to award an underwater wedding to mark the 50th anniversary of the iconic Christ of the Deep statue’s installation in Atlantic waters off Key Largo.

The 9-foot bronze Christ of the Deep has become a symbol for John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park, America’s first underwater preserve created in 1960.

It is a replica of the Italian original Il Christo Degli Abissi, or Christ of the Abyss. Visitors from around the world come to snorkel, dive or ride glass-bottom boats to view and photograph the statue that rests in less than 25 feet of water about 5 miles off Key Largo.

To mark the 50th anniversary of the statue placement, Key Largo’s Amoray Dive Resort has organized the contest to win a subsea wedding. The couple that best describes in 100 words or less why they want to be married at the statue will be selected as the winner.

The grand prize is valued at $1,500 and includes four nights at the dive resort, valid from the 23rd – 26th August, 2015, with the officiate fee and morning undersea wedding ceremony taking place on August 25th; and a wedding dinner at Sundowners Restaurant, bayside along Blackwater Sound at mile marker 104.

Entries must be submitted to manager@amoray.com by tomorrow (July 31st). Contestants must obtain a Florida state wedding application for a license and must already be certified scuba divers.

Created by artist Guido Galletti, the original was placed in the shallow San Fruttuoso Bay near Portofino, Italy, in 1954. Galletti also crafted the mold for a Christ statue that was cast for Egidi Cressi, who donated it to the Underwater Society of America in 1961.

Christ of the Deep traveled 6,000 miles from Italy to Chicago, where it was placed in storage.

Although state dive councils in Illinois, Michigan and the Northeast petitioned for the statue, it was decided the clear waters of Pennekamp were to be the statue’s resting place.

In late 1963, the statue was transported to Orlando, placed on display, and later exhibited at St. Petersburg and Palm Beach before arriving at Key Largo where it was stored outdoors at Pennekamp.

Finally, executed with the aid of local dive operators and park officials, a small budget and donations of concrete for the statue’s 20-ton base, the statue was lowered beneath the surface and secured to the seabed Aug. 25, 1965.

Source: www.keysnet.com