The bride definitely wore white as 20,000 couples took part in the largest mass wedding in a decade in dozens of cities around the world.

The 'blessing ceremony', held by the Unification Church, was its largest for 10 years and 
could be the last at such a large scale officiated by 89-year-old Reverend Sun Myung Moon, the controversial founder of the church.

More than 20,000 people crammed into the Sun Moon University campus in Asan, south of Seoul, 
for the main event this morning, with another 20,000 joining simultaneous ceremonies in the U.S. Brazil and Venezuela.
 
 

Without a hitch: Brides wore traditional white wedding dresses or national dress and grooms wore black suits and red ties. Right,
the newlyweds pray together during the ceremony.
 
 

Controversial: Reverend Sun Myung Moon, with his wife Han Hak-ja, blesses the couples during the ceremony

But none of them were being whisked off on their honeymoons. Couples are required to observe a 40-day waiting period before they 
cohabitate to prepare for marriage spiritually.  Moon, a self-proclaimed Messiah who says he was 15 when Jesus Christ 
called upon him to carry out his unfinished work, has courted controversy and criticism since founding the Unification Church in Seoul in 1954.

He held his first mass wedding in the early 1960s, arranging the marriages of 24 couples himself and renewing the vows of 12 married couples.

Over the next two decades, the weddings grew in scale. The first held outside South Korea, 
at New York's Madison Square Gardens in 1982, drew tens of thousands of participants and protesters.

In many cases, Moon paired off many couples from different countries as part of his aim of creating a multicultural religious world.

In his recent autobiography, he said: 'My wish is to completely tear down barriers and to create a world in which everyone becomes one.'

Special day: One of the brides smiles as she listens to Rev Moon during the ceremony