Bride moves wedding to hospital so sick mother can attend
Marie Ackerman and Mateas Garcia exchange wedding vows at the chapel in McKay-Dee Hospital as Bishop Bill Price officiates and Bonnie R. Anderson (far right), the bride's mother, watches the ceremony on Friday. The ceremony was moved to the hospital to allow Anderson, a patient there, to attend. (DENNIS MONTGOMERY/Special to the Standard-Examiner)
A young guest at the wedding between Marie Ackerman and Mateas Garcia, held Friday at the McKay-Dee Hospital chapel, shows how to relax during a portrait session held after the ceremony. (DENNIS MONTGOMERY/Special to the Standard-Examiner)
Marie Ackerman (right) poses with her mother, Bonnie R. Anderson, after Marie's wedding to Mateas Garcia at the McKay-Dee Hospital chapel on Friday.(DENNIS MONTGOMERY/Special to the Standard-Examiner)
Marie Ackerman and Mateas Garcia exchange wedding vows at the chapel in McKay-Dee Hospital as Bishop Bill Price officiates on Friday. (DENNIS MONTGOMERY/Special to the Standard-Examiner)
Marie Ackerman exchanges wedding vows with Mateas Garcia as Bishop Bill Price officiates in a ceremony held Friday at the McKay-Dee Hospital Chapel to allow Marie's mother, a McKay-Dee patienthhhhhh, to attend. (DENNIS MONTGOMERY/Special to the Standard-Examiner)
OGDEN — When the bride’s mother took ill and couldn’t make it to the wedding, the couple took the wedding to her — in the hospital chapel.
Bonnie Anderson noticed some swelling in her leg Wednesday night, so her husband, Jean, took her to the emergency room at McKay-Dee Hospital.After a CT scan revealed blood clots in both lungs, Bonnie Anderson was admitted and put on blood-thinning medications.
Upset that she would miss the wedding of her daughter, Marie Ackerman, Anderson said she spent the better part of Thursday crying. Little did she know, Ackerman had no plans to have her mother miss the wedding.
“When the doctor said he was uncomfortable with releasing her from the hospital to go to the wedding, I thought, ‘Well, why not see if we can get married at the hospital?’ ” Ackerman said.
“We were so happy when they gave us approval. In fact, they told us this was the first wedding inside the hospital chapel.”
At 3 p.m. Friday, the family gathered in the hospital chapel. Anderson wore a pink silk robe and pink slippers. The wedding party arrived wearing black, white and pink.
“My mom was diagnosed with breast cancer last summer, so we chose pink to signify breast cancer awareness,” Ackerman said.
Ackerman and Mateas Garcia met while working at Bonneville Collections. Garcia said he was smitten by Ackerman from the moment he saw her.
“I tried to get her phone number, but she completely shot me down,” he said. “I kept talking to her, and one day, I asked her what she was going to do on the weekend. She said she was going to go to a concert and said I should go, too.”
Garcia said he asked Ackerman how he would find her once he arrived at the concert.
“I was hoping that would be a way to get her phone number, but she looked at me and said, ‘I’ll find you,’ ” he said.
Garcia didn’t attend the concert, but later, the two met up at a birthday party and talked all night long.
“From there, love blossomed,” he said.
Garcia proposed by placing the engagement ring on the couple’s 3-month-old baby and handing her to Ackerman on bended knee.
Bill Price, a bishop with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, married the couple. He told them to exercise faith, love and respect and to treat each other with infinite worth.
Anderson said she was grateful to have such a wonderful daughter who would hold her mother in such high regard.
“The way things worked out have just been remarkable,” she said. “I’m so excited.”