Dream wedding now reality
Couple flooded with donations for special day after cancer diagnosis
The couple racing to get married before cancer claims one of their lives have been donated almost everything they need for a wedding. In July Susan Johnston, 42, was given just months to live when a tumour the size of a grapefruit was found in her brain. But that didn’t put her soulmate Nikita Ringdahl off and instead motivated them to get married — except they had no way to fund it with both of them off work.
“It’s both of our dreams to get married,” Ringdahl, 31, said.
“I want to get that ring on her finger and I want her to be my wife.”
After the Herald published their story donations have flooded in from around the country and the couple have booked their wedding in for October 1.
“I’ve had like seven thousand million messages of offers of everything,” Ringdahl said.
“I’m just working my way through them. It’s an actual wedding wedding now.”
The couple, who were originally going to get married in a registry office, have been offered a venue at the Westhaven Gardens, hair and makeup, a photographer, celebrant, florist, flash cars to get them there, and a honeymoon on Great Barrier Island at Shoal Bay Estate. They’re going to be flown to Invercargill to
HWatch video with the pair at nzherald.co.nz be fitted for wedding gowns at Brides By Donna Rae. “It’s been crazy. It’s definitely restored our faith in humanity for sure.
“I feel guilty. It’s just so many people giving, some we don’t even know or people we do know who don’t really have money and they are donating anyway. Someone on the Givealittle page said this is all I’ve got and donated $8.”
The romance started when Ringdahl lost her cat in an area near Johnston’s Waltham home late last year. She posted about it online. After a bit of banter back and forth, the two met up in a cemetery where it was love at first sight.
“The cat was never found but true love was,” Ringdahl said.
The couple got engaged early this year and put rings on hire purchase.
But their carefree “honeymoon period” didn’t last long before Johnston developed stroke-like symptoms in June. She was disoriented, uncoordinated and had intensely painful headaches. After visiting an after hours clinic they packed her into an ambulance to Christchurch Hospital for an MRI scan.
There they discovered a tumour the size of a grapefruit in her brain. Surgeons split open Johnston’s skull to remove the tumour but like “tendrils in a trellis” there was only so much they could take out without damaging her brain.
Johnston is now undergoing radiation, chemotherapy and taking up to 30 pills a day but the pair have something to look forward to, with their wedding now set in a few weeks’ time.