Couple ties the knot in a Riverhead shark tank

The bride wore white - a white wetsuit, that is.

While giant sharks loomed inches away and about 75 guests looked on in gleeful horror, a Holbrook couple tied the knot Sunday 12 feet deep in a shark tank at Atlantis Marine World.

The bride and groom, April Pignataro and Michael Curry, both experienced divers, started out the ceremony in white formal wear but then changed to white and black wetsuits. Like other visitors to the Lost City of Atlantis Shark Exhibit, they were lowered into the water inside a heavy-steel cage; they uttered their breathy vows through radio headgear transmitted to a minister outside the tank.

The minister, Mike Cassara, who has known Pignataro for a dozen years, said it was his first underwater wedding. "It's pretty cool," he said. But there were minor complications.

Midway through the vows, a menacing sand tiger shark hovered between Cassara and the couple, blocking his view. "Can someone move this shark?" he said. Eventually, it swam away.

The bride's father, Phil Pignataro, said April has been a water lover since she was 6 months old. "At 2 years, she was Red Cross certified," said Phil Pignataro, himself a diver. "This comes very natural to her." And the sharks? "You're in a cage, it's no big deal."

It wasn't the first underwater wedding at the Riverhead aquarium (there's been three or four others), but it was the most elaborate, said Johanna Zucaro, an Atlantis spokeswoman.

The only drawback: The couple had to wait until they surfaced for their first kiss as husband and wife. To a throng of media, April Curry, after the 30-minute ceremony, described the water as "a little chilly at first - now it's time to party."

Asked why a water wedding, she said, "It's something we love to do - it's right up our alley."

As they ran off to change for the reception, a line from Cassara's service seemed fitting. "The most important piece of clothing you wear," he said, "is love."