A mountaineering bride and groom scaled a sheer cliff in full wedding garb to hold their ceremony on top of a 275-metre rocky outcrop in the US.

We didn’t have a lot of space. It’s a small mountain top

Photos of them have become a hit online, with more than 500,000 views.

Bob Ewing proposed to Antonie Hodge in March as the couple scaled the Seneca Rocks in West Virginia and after she said yes, she said she wanted to get married there as well.

Their families pitched in. Brother Scott Ewing got himself ordained and performed the ceremony.

Another brother, John Ewing, made a separate climb and photographed the ceremony with a high-powered lens.

Antonie Hodge Ewing made the climb in her mother’s wedding gown.

Her mother, Evangeline Hodge, made it up the rocks as well.

“I had to prove to myself I could do it,” said Mrs Hodge, a novice climber who refused permission to print her age.

“I did it for all the old people out there.”

Initially, the plan was for immediate family and some close friends to all make the climb, Antonie said.

But it became unwieldy and they had to cut almost everyone from the climbing party.

“We didn’t have a lot of space. It’s a small mountain top,” she said.

Family and friends who could not make the August 11 climb participated in a second ceremony and reception the following day.

Mr Ewing was introduced to both his loves, Antonie and rock climbing, through his job as a director of communications for a public interest law firm in Washington, DC.

He was introduced to the sport by a co-worker and to his future wife, a network relations marketing coordinator, three years ago by summer law clerks.

Arthur Kearns, owner of the Seneca Rocks Climbing School, said people have occasionally got married at the peak but he was not aware of anyone doing it in formal attire.

Mr Kearns planned himself to get married at the peak 19 years ago, “but the minister tapped out ... about 60 metres off the ground,” apparently afraid of heights.