Before we're married, we tend to have a loose idea of what our perfect wedding would look like. Even if the plans or details change, in the end, we're marrying our one and only surrounded by people who love us, and who could ask for a better day?
Sometimes, though, life has an interesting way of mixing things up, meaning some weddings don't go quite as planned. One couple got to experience this firsthand when their planned order of events went haywire.
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When we're young, our life milestones are pretty concentrated. Within just a few years, we reach so many of them, like learning how to walk, our first words, starting school, and tons of other benchmarks we use to measure childhood growth.
As we get older, these tend to space out. Years go by between big life events, with two of the biggest being getting married and starting a family. While they can happen in any order or at any time, there's often a space between, giving newly married couples time to settle down before having kids.
For some, though, that space gets swallowed up, and big things start to happen very, very fast.
Michael Odland and Nora Regis, both 38, had already planned their wedding to be well before the predicted arrival of their baby. They were set to tie the knot on May 10th, while their baby wasn't due until June.
That was until that baby decided to throw a major curveball their way by showing up early. Very early.
"You know what they say, you make plans and God laughs," Michael said in an interview with PEOPLE.
This would have thrown a wrench into any couple's plans, but Michael and Nora had an extra concern. They wanted to be married before they became parents.
Nora's water broke on April 18th at only 33 weeks pregnant, a few weeks away from their planned wedding and nearly two months away from their baby's original due date.
"Our first thoughts were just trying to assess the risk and making the choice to do a C-section," Michael said.
They realized that, if there was a planned surgery, they could still try to get married before the baby was delivered. As Michael added, "That kind of allowed us to ask if this is being scheduled, do you have a chaplain and can you marry us here?"
Their nurse, Valerie Goodwin, went above and beyond trying to get them their marriage, though she was understandably surprised at first. "It was the most unusual request I think I've ever had in the 17 years I’ve been a nurse," she said.
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The strangeness didn't stop her or "all the other nurses" from jumping on the chance to help this couple out.
A veil was made from hospital gauze, and flowers were taken from a display to be made into a bouquet, but finding a chaplain to actually marry them was rather difficult.
"We got bumped back by six or eight hours because there were others who needed to go first, so in that time the maternity nursing staff was working in the background," Michael explained.
"They were calling everyone asking 'Can anyone marry them?'"
After a ton of searching, they found their man, an EMS paramedic named Michael "Rev" Revenson, who was also a non-denominational officiant.
"It was a last-ditch effort," says Revenson. “My shift started at 11 p.m., so I said I can be right over. They already had their vows and their marriage license so we were all set. And the hospital and staff really went above and beyond for this.”
"When he arrived, the nurses formed an aisle around the front of the maternity ward desk that gave us a real wedding experience," Michael said. "For me, it was just really moving."
Nora added, "It was really cool and sweet. They were all so excited and it was really heartwarming."
Nora's mother was also there, not only to witness the birth of her grandchild but also to act as a wedding photographer, capturing the entire beautiful yet strange sequence of events on camera.
Immediately after the wedding, Nora was off to deliver her baby.
"So right after the wedding, we put on our scrubs," Michael says. "We're walking to the delivery room and it was like, that really did happen in the nick of time."
It's an unbelievable story of a couple (and their slew of incredible nurses) who made something that seemed impossible happen anyway. They wanted things to happen in a certain order and weren't about to give that up, still able to create the marriage, birth, and family they'd been planning for.
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