New Zealand stages first Pastafarian wedding on pirate boat.
The light-hearted Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster has staged its first legally recognised wedding.

Toby Ricketts and Marianna Fenn tied the "noodle knot" in the New Zealand South Island town of Akaroa.

The happy couple say that guidelines of the Pastafarian religion stipulate that wedding celebrants must be pirates.

Members of the church profess the belief that the world was created by an airborne spaghetti and meatballs-based being and humans evolved from pirates.

New Zealand officials last month designated the religion as an officially-recognised faith, allowing Wellington-based Pastafarian Karen Martyn the legal right to conduct marriages.