Nick Bauder and Crystal Batista had originally planned a big wedding. But when they learned that Nick's mom may not be able to make it, they ditched their plans and got hitched in a hospital room instead.
A couple from the city of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania recently got hitched by the groom's mother's bedside in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). Nick Bauder and Crystal Batista exchanged vows by the former's mother's ICU bedside at Allegheny General Hospital on Friday morning, fulfilling her desire of seeing her son get married.
The couple was originally supposed to hold their wedding ceremony later this month on August 21, but they received the call about Bauder's mother. Unfortunately, her doctors said they did not expect her to survive. The staff members at the hospital were, thus, incredibly "thrilled" to accommodate the couple's request in order to make the best out of a "not-so-great" situation, CBS News reports.
Nick and Crystal were supposed to get married in two weeks, but Nick's mother is in the hospital and isn't expected to survive. They got married at Allegheny General Hospital this morning so his mom could be there. https://t.co/0zjNHU1bOi
— KDKA (@KDKA) August 12, 2022
This is not the first time a couple has decided to host an intimate affair like a wedding in a hospital. For example, Emberli and Dallen Smuins from Salt Lake City in Utah said "I do" at the University of Utah Hospital earlier this year so the latter's mother could be in attendance. She had been in a terrible accident, which meant that it would have been unlikely for her to be able to make it to the big wedding they had planned. Dallen shared, "We had to change our whole schedule and cancel, tell our families and people we invited to the wedding to not show up, that we had different plans." "It was a little stressful at times, like, a lot of back and forth," Emberli added. "Is she coming home? Are we going to do it out there? But, it worked out really well in the end."
Of course, no wedding at a hospital would be possible without caring and thoughtful hospital staff, who always seem to go out of their way to make their patients feel special. Some hospitals even have chaplains. While they typically offer spiritual guidance and pastoral care to patients and their families, most are equipped to officiate a wedding. At another hospital wedding, a nurse immediately went to call the hospital chaplain, who officiated the marriage swiftly. Kay Walden writes of her experience, "[The chaplain] arrived shortly after, and we were married by 11:45 p.m. on February 21. To our surprise, my father asked him to also renew my parents’ vows. It was a beautiful ceremony celebrating the love they shared."
References:
https://www.cbsnews.com/pittsburgh/news/couple-gets-married-allegheny-general-hospital/
https://www.newsweek.com/couple-gets-married-hospital-room-brides-dying-father-1639532
https://scrubbing.in/our-hospital-room-wedding-bringing-the-ceremony-to-my-moms-bedside/
Image Source: Getty Images | Alex Rodas
