Florida Couple Weds in Hospital Night Before Wife Dies of Cancer

A Florida woman who was dying of cancer had her childhood wish to marry her best friend come true just hours before she passed away this month. Now her husband says he plans on completing the rest of the items she had on her bucket list. 

According to Fox 35 Orlando, Nina Marino, 19, and Joey Williams, 21, exchanged vows at St. Joseph's Children Hospital on Sept. 3, just hours before Marino passed away. According to their Facebook page, "The Chronic Travelers," she had been diagnosed with undifferentiated plemorphic sarcoma. 

The wedding was originally scheduled for Sept 4, but doctors were afraid that Marino wouldn't make it through the night. The wedding party scrambled to put everything together a day earlier, but found themselves without a photographer. A friend of the couple reached out to Nil Patel of Patel Creative who documented the wedding in a blog post on the Love What Matters website. 

"I dropped everything, ran upstairs, took a shower, changed and grabbed my gear," Patel said. "I bolted out the door to St. Joseph’s Hospital. The ceremony was originally going to take place in the small chapel within the hospital, but unfortunately Nina was too frail to walk down the aisle. So, we had to set up the ceremony location directly in her room inside the Pediatric Intense Care Unit."

Patel wrote that the pair met when they were still young children attending the same camp together and that their love had grown over their years together. 

"While Nina was not able to verbally express her love for Joey, it only took a look to bring him to his knees. He knew. It was the kind of love where no words have to be exchanged to know what the other person was saying," Patel wrote on his blog. 

In a Facebook post dedicated to his wife, Williams, talked about the many adventures the pair had gone on together. The pair loved to travel, and often posted their photos online. 

"All of these memories that I will never forget and that make me so happy,” he wrote on Sept. 6. “But perhaps the most amazing memory of all is when we finally got to fulfill our dream of getting married. It may not have been what we had seen in our heads when we thought about our wedding, but it was perfect. You looked so beautiful in your dress, and the way your eyes lit up when I put the ring on your finger will stay with me forever.”


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