The Promise: A Tragic Accident, a Paralyzed Bride, and the Power of Love, Loyalty, and Friendship (12 page)

CHAPTER 24

The Rehearsal

July finally arrived, and the Thursday before my wedding
was the most hectic day. Mom and I were rushing around, and I was kind of stressed out. We had a lot to accomplish before we left town for the rehearsal and the wedding. I had to worry about my hair and my tan. I had had an opportunity to have hair extensions put on for free, but because of timing, I missed the window. So I was freaking out a bit, like any other bride, because I wanted my hair to be perfect. I had the actual hair extensions but no one to attach them. I found one guy who said he could do it for three hundred dollars, but that was way out of my price range. I didn’t expect it to be so challenging. Finally, after many frantic calls, I found someone who was available and who gave me a really great price.

For me, the wedding was not about the flowers, the food, or any of that. It came down to two things: One, I needed to look great. Before I got hurt I used to say all the time that I wanted to look good. I wanted it to be the same after the accident. I wanted to look as good as any other bride, knowing I would be upset if I didn’t. It wasn’t about having the perfect wedding day, but looking good still mattered. I wanted to look good enough that no one saw the wheelchair, that all anyone would say was, “What a beautiful bride.” Two, I needed Chris to be there. That was the bottom line.

Part of looking great meant that the tan and hair were integral parts of that equation. I had solved the hair problem, but the challenge of the tan was full of additional obstacles. I used to get spray tans all the time where you stand up and get sprayed. But that was when I was able-bodied. Luckily, I found a woman who would come to my home since we’d have to adjust the methodology a bit to get it done.

“Normally, we set up a tent so your home doesn’t get spray tanned, too,” she explained. “You’d stand up and I’d spray you.”

I laughed. “Obviously, I can’t stand up in the tent. We’ll have to figure something else out.”

She was so nice and not weirded out at all, which made me happy.

“I’ve seen a ton of people naked,” she said. “We’ll figure something out.”

We brainstormed a bit and decided to do it in my bedroom on the bed, with me lying down. It was a production and it took about an hour, because we had to spray and dry, spray and dry. I was flipped around, and at one point my mom had to hold up my legs one at a time so we could spray those.

In the middle of it all, Chris came home and had no idea that I was getting a spray, and no idea that there was a random person at my house in our room. He came in the bedroom and opened the door. He made the funniest face and said, “All right,” and closed the door and went downstairs.

After all of that, the tan was overly dark and I had to do a little scrubbing to lighten it up.

We had an intimate bridal shower at the wedding site, which was so nice. The wedding was being held on a dairy farm in Pittsboro, North Carolina, with a hotel on the grounds called the Fearrington House and community called Fearrington Village. There were cows in the field behind us while we got married, so you can imagine the setting. It was really country, which was what I wanted.

My shower was originally planned for the day after the bachelorette party. So I’d never had one. I wore a flowing maxi dress that was very casual. With all my extensions in, my hair was long and straight, very hippielike. The shower was in a beautiful room, set up on a terrace with windows all the way around. It was an open and elegant space with a Victorian look to the furniture. It had a big floral carpet with a large wooden table in the middle that held all the food. My mom brought a cupcake holder, and we had these hilarious drinking cups with noses drawn on the side of them. They were just plastic cups, but when you took a drink, it looked like your nose; some had mustaches, some had nose rings, and some were really big. We played a few games, such as “Who Knows the Bride Better?” and we all laughed when my mom guessed my eye color incorrectly. My eyes are hazel, and my mom wrote green. Lauren won the game. Britney was late and could come only for the rehearsal, but Samantha and Carly drove up together and made it to the lunch.

Coincidentally, all the girls matched. Lauren and Samantha were both wearing coral dresses, and Carly wore a tan dress with a coral flower in her hair, and a fifth bridesmaid I had added—a woman named Mayra who worked with Chris and had become friends with us—wore floral, too. By the time the rehearsal took place, it was a typical hot and steamy July evening.

During the rehearsal we all had a good laugh because Chris and I practiced our kiss, which I hadn’t really expected to be any kind of problem, since we’d kissed a million times before. It turned out to be the funniest part of the evening. I had no core muscles, so I couldn’t lean forward and kiss him or I’d fall right out of my chair. Carly wound up having to sort of block the chair so it wouldn’t roll backward at that very important moment. At the same time Chris had to hold my wrist to pull me toward him. He had to hold on firmly so I wouldn’t fall. I fell over a couple of times until we got the right balance. Chris caught me. Next we had to practice putting on the rings because I didn’t have finger function. He obviously put a ring on me, but I wanted to put his ring on him, too. We thought about it for a long time, trying to ensure it was meaningful. We finally came up with the solution to put his ring at the tip of my finger, then he’d connect his fingertip to mine and I’d slide it on—like a fake push from me, and he did the rest. Chris’s uncle Ron came up with that one. He was the minister performing the ceremony the next day.

After all the laughs and the rehearsal, I said goodnight to Chris. He kissed me and said, “I love you.”

I said, “I love you, too.”

He said, “I can’t wait to marry you. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

I remember thinking,
Wow, this is finally happening.
We were ready to be married. We had waited so long, and it was so exciting. It was fun getting his friends and my friends together and having this wonderful time that we’d never been able to have. I was thrilled that it was the last time I was going to see Chris before I could finally call him my husband.

That night, Carly, Samantha, and I all stayed together in one room. It was like a slumber party, and we had so much fun. Every time we were sort of drifting off to sleep, someone said something, like when you’re fourteen and having a sleepover with friends and someone keeps talking. It was the greatest night.

CHAPTER 25

The Perfect Wedding

When I woke up on July 22, I was not jittery at all, but I
had happy anxiety. It was my day, with my girls by my side. I was excited about my hair and my dress, and I was overjoyed that they were all there for me and were all going to be part of it. I had so many happy thoughts. We had people who had donated their time to fix our hair and makeup. One of the makeup artists was actually the wife of a local radio celebrity named Mike Morse. Chris listened to his show every morning and was a big fan. Our wedding planner knew him, and Mike offered to MC the wedding at the last minute. We’d already lined up a band and DJ, and now we’d also have Mike as our MC. It was a huge surprise for Chris. We didn’t tell him that Mike would be MCing our wedding and that his wife, Lindsay, did our makeup. She is highly requested around our area for makeup and he’s often requested for parties, so we felt like celebrities.

I have two
really
vivid memories of my group of girls. One, of course, was the night of the accident—that’s seared in all of our heads. But the other, the bookend of my thoughts of them, was on my wedding day in the early morning. Those girls were as important to that day as Chris.

We were all getting ready together in this really pretty little room. Lauren, Carly, Britney, Samantha, and I were all having our makeup and hair done, just like we had before we headed out dancing the night of the bachelorette party. We needed three hairstylists to keep things moving.

I had to get into my dress, and we knew ahead of time that might prove to be a challenge. I wanted to keep my wedding dress—the one I had bought originally, before the accident. It was definitely one of those “This is the dress” moments that I had with it, so changing it was not even remotely an option. Even if 1-800-Registry wanted to buy me the fanciest dress on the planet, I wouldn’t have been able to accept it. I had fallen in love with mine. My mom really wanted to buy my dress, and she had worked so hard to make the payments on it. We couldn’t afford it all at once, and she had made the final payment right before the wedding. I was in love with the dress, and it was so meaningful to me.

So 1-800-Registry paid for the seamstress to fix my original dress. She had to take it in a bit, but it required a much larger alteration. The back had a corset that laced down and then exploded into a train. The train had to be removed, because I certainly couldn’t sit on top of that crazy pile of fabric. It would have filled my chair. We laughed really hard when we tried to put it on a couple of months before the wedding, before the alteration. We pulled it over my head, but you couldn’t see me. It wouldn’t go down over my head, so it looked like a person with no head and long legs. Everyone laughed as I sat there covered in dress, and someone said, “Nope, nope, this won’t work.” Which of course made us all laugh harder.

Essentially, after much thought, we decided to have the dress sliced open up the back, so that when you unlaced it in the back, it literally folded open. I had to do this so I could get into it. There was simply no other way for me to put it on. We tried. It was hard enough to put on a wedding dress while standing up with help. Putting it over my head with me sitting wasn’t an option. So that day, we had to lay it down on the bed, spread it out, and open it up, almost like a wrap you would make a sandwich with. After much deliberation I had to lie facedown on the bed and get my boobs lined up, and then someone had to lace me up while I was there facedown. It was pretty hysterical, I have to say. They had to keep moving me around and shifting body parts to line things up. Obviously, I was totally over being naked in front of people—you lose that shyness after an injury like mine.

We were all laughing and giggling, and the moment felt perfect. It was eight in the morning. I didn’t normally drink coffee, but I was tired so I had a cup and it actually tasted really good. It was probably because I loaded it up with cream and sugar. I remember at one point looking around and feeling like this was the start of something better, the beginning of a new chapter. I felt like some healing would occur because the wedding was no longer something that had been taken away. It was given back to me, and I was overwhelmed with happiness. It was given back to my friends, too, especially the one who had pushed me and suffered so much for that act. I was so grateful they were all there. These girls were more than just bridesmaids to me. In fact, I had not one but four best friends who were all like sisters. My wedding wouldn’t have been my wedding without them. But my favorite part about that morning as we got ready was that no one mentioned the accident, the wheelchair, or the reason we were glued together for life. I am sure no one even thought about it. It was just a happy day. A beautiful, happy day.

It was so hot that day—102 degrees. Everyone was laughingly complaining about the heat. Out of the blue Carly began to put baby powder between her thighs.

Of course ridiculous laughter erupted.

“What the heck are you doing?” I asked.

“Well, I don’t want my thighs sticking together from all the sweat!”

We shared ten minutes of real laughter. Everyone was throwing the bottle of powder back and forth, and it was hilarious. They all looked so dignified and dainty all done up, but they were still acting like their goofy selves, and it felt so normal and good. I didn’t sweat anymore because of my injury—most C-level injuries don’t sweat because the part of the nervous system that controls that function no longer works. I was also always freezing, so the heat didn’t bother me at all. But we were laughing hysterically about the baby powder. All of them were hiking up their dresses and trying to delicately put powder on their thighs without getting it on the dresses. They’d gotten these new beautiful, flowing J. Crew dresses in turquoise, which went really well with the country setting and the sunflowers they would be carrying. They loved the new dresses, too.

Every moment of the wedding was amazing. I had always dreamed of a country wedding—something very Southern. I just thought I would like something rustic. I had really wanted to get married in a setting with a barn. I had Googled “North Carolina barn” and “North Carolina barn wedding,” and one of the results that came up was this perfect place. I originally thought it was more of a casual setting, but it turned out to be extremely fancy. On the grounds of this dairy farm was a beautiful five-star hotel, and it had appeared in many magazines. The barn was not just a barn; it was like a reception hall, quite elegant with chandeliers everywhere. I didn’t expect all that, but of course when I saw it, I thought,
Oh, definitely.

© Martha Manning Photography

I could see the ceremony beginning outside. I watched each bridesmaid make her way down to where she would start her walk. I think they were more nervous than I was because they were being videotaped, but not by any TV cameras, just our own cameras. Plus, I was a center-stage kind of person. I didn’t mind being in front of big crowds, but the bridesmaids were worried about tripping down the aisle. At least I no longer had to worry about stumbling down the aisle in heels.

I know it must have been hard for my friend who pushed me, because it was only one year after the accident, but that night by the pool was completely off limits. This was not a day to reflect on the incident by the pool, and everyone knew that. I was grateful for that unspoken silence. We were all looking forward to my wedding day, even though she hadn’t healed. Still, I took great pleasure in looking down the aisle, knowing she was happy and she seemed to be getting caught up in the moment with us all, having a good time. I’m sure it was hard for her, but it would have been sad if she hadn’t been there, sad for me. I think she knew that. Plus, I knew that seeing me marry the love of my life would give her a little bit of inner peace.

It all felt real when I watched my bridesmaids walking down the aisle, and I thought to myself,
Wow! They’re going and then it is my turn!
As my dad pushed me in my wheelchair, I was looking at the crowd to see who was there, instead of looking at Chris, and then suddenly I was at the front beside him and my dad kissed me on the cheek.

It felt to me (and my mother said this, too) that the wedding day wasn’t only the day I’d committed to Chris, but it was my finish line. It marked the end of the ordeal, the end of the interruption from the accident. It felt like things had come full circle.

The setting was perfect. The only rough part was that Chris and I had to sit a little farther apart than I would have liked. My chair and the chair he sat in facing me couldn’t really fit any closer together. But we held onto each other and it was all okay. Better than okay.

Our vows were incredibly special. I remember them vividly. We said the same thing to one another. I said, “I, Rachelle, take you, Chris, to be no other than yourself. Loving what I know of you and trusting what I do not yet know, with faith in your love for me, through all of our years, and in all that life may bring us. I promise to be ever open to you and above all to do everything in my power to permit you to become the person you are yet to be. I give you my love.” I was smiling as I said that, though I thought I was going to cry. I was just so happy to be there that I didn’t stumble over the words at all. We each repeated them after his uncle said them for us, a few words at a time. We kissed after that, and then, in Jewish tradition, Chris stomped on a glass. Carly was holding my bouquet. I turned to go back down the aisle without taking it. She said, “Rachelle, don’t forget this.” I turned and looked, and really loudly I said, “Oh, crap.” Everyone laughed.

After the vows we had a special moment to ourselves. We went in this little room, and even though everyone wanted to congratulate us, we took five minutes to be alone together. There was no conversation. Chris just hugged me tightly and kissed me. And we looked at each other with this amazing shared excitement.

What I cherished most about my wedding day was my first dance as Chris’s wife. The entire day felt like a movie in my head being played second by second, but one beautiful moment, my favorite, was the first dance. Chris and the guys wore dark grey striped tuxedos with turquoise ties to match the girls’ dresses. Chris wore white on white—white tie, white shirt—and a sunflower boutonniere. I took a moment to absorb how he looked as we were getting ready to dance. We hadn’t practiced it before our wedding day, and I was nervous even though I figured it couldn’t be that difficult. Who would have ever thought my dance would be done from a chair and that still it would be the most memorable, heartwarming part of my day? We danced to “Won’t Let Go” by Rascal Flatts. The chorus fit perfectly; it’s all about never letting go of the person you love and being there no matter what. I had actually switched the song to something by Corey Smith, but the DJ hadn’t made that change, so Rascal Flatts came on. It was funny and yet so perfect. I’m glad it got chosen for us like that.

© Martha Manning Photography

There wasn’t a dry eye in the house. We did twirls all over the floor and everyone thought it was rehearsed, but really it just came naturally and was totally spontaneous. It wasn’t being able to stand up that I missed during that dance, but I wished I could have used my hands so that I was able to hold Chris’s hand during our dance. He held my hands, but I would have loved to hold on in return. I wished we could have been able to embrace one another. As someone who loved dancing, I never thought I’d be wheeling around the dance floor with my new husband. But it was still an amazing moment that I will never forget.

My maid of honor read something at my reception that had meaning to a lot of people. It was a quote from Bruce Lee: “Love is a friendship caught on fire. In the beginning a flame, very pretty, often hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. As love grows older, our hearts mature and our love becomes as coals, deep-burning and unquenchable.”

I know people find this hard to believe, but there was never a moment where I felt sad about being in the chair that day. I really, truly didn’t. I had a dream wedding. I had had a dream bachelorette party before the accident, too. The wedding wasn’t about walking. It was about love. It was about the man I loved and my family and my friends being there for us, together. Walking wasn’t a requirement for celebrating. I don’t think anyone else had any sad feelings, either. In fact, it might have been more meaningful to everyone. It might have been more significant and a reason to celebrate because I’d survived. It was just a bride and a groom and a great ending to a terrible ordeal. It was as sweet as everyone else’s wedding. I had all the trimmings and fun and an awesome husband—more than everything I’d dreamed of.