On Monday, March 25, 2016 a patient came into Labor & Delivery after her water broke. The patient and her fiancé had an appointment at the Justice of the Peace to get married that day and she was disappointed that they were going to miss it. With just those simple words, the L&D staff went to work to make this a special day for this patient. Since the patient wasn’t in active labor yet, they proceeded to arrange a “surprise” wedding for the couple in her labor room.
Amber Stutzman was the nurse who facilitated getting the marriage license and bringing the idea forward. Terri McCarrell then jumped into action, contacting various departments to get their support. She called Chaplain Ken Morse, to ask him to do the ceremony. Stacey Hamilton, in Nutrition Services, put together a beautiful cake and even made flowers out of strawberries as a centerpiece. They were able to get sparkling cider and wine glasses for the couple to toast after the ceremony. Joyce Young, our CUA, got flowers and ribbon to make a bouquet. Jessica Dearborn helped to put together the flowers into not only a bouquet for the patient, but also a couple of corsages for the chaplain and husband-to-be. Dr. Robert Harder provided the music for the ceremony. Also special thanks to Mark Glyzewski from Marketing who was called less than an hour before the wedding and asked if he could capture the moment on video. He was able to drop everything and come.
This was a real team effort to provide this couple exactly what they needed on this day. The patient and her family were so pleased!