When a big wave wiped out a wedding in Hawaii: Watch video

For a fraction of a second the wave towered over the low wall that separated them from the swelling ocean.

Then it came crashing over the divide, toppling tables and chairs and sending all the guests running for cover at a wedding in Kailua-Kona in Hawaii. It happened five minutes before the ceremony was set to begin and messed up all preparations including the bar, but reportedly the wedding cake was safe.

A video of the incident, which happened on Saturday evening - when large waves, some more than six metres high, barrelled into homes and businesses and spilled across highways in Hawaii's southern shores - is going around on the Internet.

Sara Ackerman, an author who was there at the wedding, shot the video as the wave came in. "I was filming it and then it just came over the wall and just completely annihilated all the tables and chairs,” Ackerman told AP.

But it was not a dangerous situation and certainly made no change to plans. They decided to go ahead with the wedding and clean up the mess after the ceremony was over.

"We definitely kept going . And, if anything, it kind of made everybody closer really quick," the groom, Dillon Murphy, later told CNN.

The met office in Honolulu said several factors came together to create those huge waves, and that some of them were the largest ever seen in Hawaii in several decades.