Amanda Knox, exonerated on charges of killing her roommate in Italy, is moving forward. Like light years forward.
Knox and fiance Christopher Robinson have created a website seeking funds from family and friends to pay for an out-of-this world wedding. The two say they are bypassing a traditional registry and instead are hoping to raise $10,000 for their space-themed nuptials, which will feature “mind-bending sets” and “extravagant alien food.”
“Let’s face it, we don’t need any more stuff,” they write on the website. “What we do need is help putting on the best party ever for our family and friends!”
Knox returned to Italy last month for the first time since her prison release in 2011 to speak at an event for the Italy Innocence Project. According to the couple’s crowdfunding page, they had “scant time to plan” for their trip overseas and “no financial backing,” which prompted them to dip into their wedding funds.
The couple is now hoping supporters will help them pay for set designers, an “interactive theater” and special effects including LEDs, projectors and hidden wires. See the full registry here.
The couple’s efforts to solicit money have received swift backlash. Twitter users questioned why she needed to raise the money at all while others wondered whether the wedding was a publicity stunt.
One newspaper called it “brazen.” Another called it “shameless.”
Knox responded to the criticism Tuesday on Twitter, saying, “To those hating on us all day, you’ve been duped by the outrage machine. You gave ad $ to tabloids that profit by making you angry about things that don’t matter. Our wedding will be crazy & fun & barebones if it needs to be, but in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t matter.”
Their wedding comes a decade after Knox was accused of killing her British roommate, Meredith Kercher in 2007, while they were studying abroad in Perugia, Italy.
Knox and her then-boyfriend, Italian Raffaele Sollecito, were found guilty of murder. Both Sollecito and Knox were convicted in 2009 and sentenced to lengthy prison terms.
They spent about four years in Italian prisons but an appeals court threw out their convictions in October 2011, citing a lack of evidence against them, and both were set free.
CNN’s Faith Karimi contributed to this report.
