Bride and groom defy doom and gloom
ORLANDO: Lauren Durham had a poofy white dress and plans for an intimate beach wedding on the second weekend of September.
Instead she got married in fatigues, with no makeup, in a vast hangar filled with rescue vehicles and paramedics just hours before she would rush into a hurricane to try to save her fellow Floridians.
She and her fiance, Michael Davis – both of them senior airmen with the Air National Guard – were deployed indefinitely to assist with the rescue.
They let their out-of-town guests know they’d probably miss their own wedding and headed to the Orange County Convention Center to wait out the hurricane with hundreds of other relief workers before being sent into the state’s most devastated regions.
They were eating breakfast with some friends Sunday morning, and one said, “Hey, why don’t you guys get married during the hurricane?”
Durham said: “It started out as a joke, and it just kind of unfolded. And it turned out to be really great.”
Dozens of people – some longtime friends from the service, some strangers from across the country who came to assist with the rescue efforts – set up folding chairs. A few found tuxedo T-shirts to wear, despite the closure of all the stores in town for the storm.
Someone came up with a bouquet of orange flowers. Their best friend in the Guard happens to be a notary and officiated.
They don’t think they’ll be able to come up with a cake, but that’s OK: “We have plenty of snacks. MREs do have Skittles in them, so we’re pretty excited,” Durham said. — AP