A Vancouver Island couple’s ice-cold plunge into marriage is giving a new meaning to getting cold feet your wedding day.

Paul Catherine and Jodie Lewis just got married in a place few people will ever see, let alone say their “I dos”: the shoreline of Cuverville Island in Antarctica.

Lewis, a Cumberland, B.C.-native, and Catherine, who is from England, aren’t strangers to adventure – the couple work as exotic adventure guides.

In fact, they were already in South America when they made the decision to keep heading south – past the Antarctic Circle and through the Southern Ocean.

“Antarctica is somewhere we'd always wanted to go to so we travel a lot and we've been to every other continent so it was like our seventh continent to go to,” Catherine told CTV News.

The couple had been carrying a wedding dress and formal clothes over three continents looking for the perfect time and place to marry.

But their dream ceremony almost didn’t happen, due to a change in weather.

“Of course Antarctica had varying weather, so the morning that they were thinking of there was a huge snow squall and they weren't sure it was going to be possible but by the afternoon it had cleared up, Lewis said.

A marriage commission from Uclulet, B.C., performed the ceremony, and it was also witnessed by the first person to ever reach the South Pole.

“Everyone else was in their proper coats and Jody in a wedding dress and I was just in a shirt and we didn't really notice the cold, I think because it was obviously quite exciting,” Catherine said.

Curious penguins surrounded the ceremony, walking around the couple to get a closer look.

Lewis said the flightless birds stayed close to their tent that night as well.

“They were very, very curious,” she said.

The couple's plunge into married life also took them into the freezing South Pacific Ocean. Dressed in their finery, they rang in their nuptials with a polar bear dip into the frigid waters.

“People were quite surprised I did that with my dress on, but, you know, it didn't matter,” Lewis said.

The couple isn’t taking a honeymoon, but says they’ll depart for their next grand adventure soon.

With a report from CTV Vancouver Island’s Gord Kurbis