On Wedding Day, Bride and Groom Lose Everything

They hope they can find their wedding rings in the ashes
By Elizabeth Armstrong Moore,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 27, 2015 7:34 AM CDT
On Wedding Day, Bride and Groom Lose Everything
People raised more than $5,000 in just one day for Andrew Taylor and Dayleen Marrero.   (GoFundMe)

It almost went according to plan. Andrew Taylor and Dayleen Marrero had their dream wedding on Friday, a black-and-gold retro Hollywood theme with 100 guests in a loft space near their apartment, and friends even broke out into a flash mob dance. But just hours earlier, their apartment building caught fire and Taylor managed to escape with only his tuxedo and their pit bull mix, opting to knock on the doors of 20 second-story neighbors instead of salvaging stuff. Before they even exchanged vows the couple, both artists, had lost all their worldly possessions, including their wedding rings and priceless photo journals and art pieces. "It was everything I had dreamed of," Marrero tells the Chicago Tribune. "It just happened to be the same day where we lost everything."

Now, in just one day, the GoFundMe page a friend started for the newlyweds has passed the target $5,000. "Although they are fortunate to have each other and their pup Dharma, this morning they woke up to the harsh reality of what happened to their home and their possessions," the friend wrote. A fire marshal found their doused marriage license and the letter Taylor intended to read at the wedding, but two of their groomsmen who live next-door weren't home and lost their cat and dog. And while Taylor got into wedding mode as soon as he saw Marrero walking down the aisle, she says only their vows and the flash mob distracted her; the rest of the evening she kept escaping to cry. "I'm super happy I married my best friend," she says. "It's a bump in the road. I know we'll figure it out." (This bride jumped three stories to escape a fire just days before her wedding.)

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