Imagine,as she prepared for her wedding Friday afternoon, Dayleen Marrero answered a phone call from her fiance, Andrew Taylor, expecting him to simply say "I love you."
Instead, sirens blared in the background as he told her that smoke was billowing out of their Chicago apartment building at 128 N. Campbell Ave.
"I obviously started freaking out at the hotel," said Marrero, 27. "He was like, 'It's going to be fine. Maybe we're not going to lose everything.' "
Taylor, 28, was able to knock on the doors of more than 20 tenants on the second floor of their West Side apartment building and escape with their pit bull mix and his tuxedo, but everything else was left behind, he said, including their wedding rings.
A fire marshal later salvaged their doused marriage license and a letter Taylor planned to read at the ceremony, but two of their groomsmen next door who were not home during the fire lost a dog and a cat.
"An animal, you can't replace that," Marrero said. "That's family."
Like the bride and groom, most of the tenants who lived on the second floor of the two-story commercial building are artists. The groomsmen lost designer costumes and equipment used during circus performances. Marrero lost the silks and costumes she uses as an aerial acrobat, and Taylor lost paintings and instruments.
There also were irreplaceable things, Marrero said, like photos and journals.
"Probably the only thing that could distract us from our house burning down is the wedding," Taylor said.
Their evening wedding, decorated in an old Hollywood theme of black and gold with roughly 100 guests in a loft space near their apartment, was beautiful, Taylor said. Marrero's brother officiated the ceremony, and during the reception, the wedding party and a few friends broke out into a flash mob dance.
"It was everything I had dreamed of," Marrero said. "It just happened to be the same day where we lost everything."
The couple was largely in a daze, they admitted. For the ceremony, they borrowed an uncle's ring for him, and she used her engagement ring. One of the groomsmen who lost his tuxedo in the blaze pulled together an outfit with the help of friends.
Taylor said he was able to get into wedding mode as soon as he saw Marrero walk down the aisle. Marrero said she could only focus during the vows and the flash mob during the reception and had to escape throughout the evening to cry.
"I was the saddest I've ever been in my whole life, and I was the happiest as well," Marrero said. "So it's like a roller coaster of emotions."
The next day, the couple agreed, numbness hit.
"We find ourselves making fire jokes that are super inappropriate," Taylor said. "We're trying to laugh about it because it's so messed up."
News spread fast because of the wedding, and friends and family in town have poured out their support.
Friends bought them clothes and toiletries. Another friend started a GoFundMe page. Meanwhile, they are unofficially honeymooning on a friend's pull-out couch as they wait to be allowed to re-enter the building to salvage what they can.
They hope, at the very least, they can find their wedding rings.
"I'm happy. I'm super happy I married my best friend, and it's awesome. It's all we ever dreamed of," Marrero said. "It's a bump in the road. I know we'll figure it out."
No comments:
Post a Comment