She wanted her dying dad to walk her down the aisle — so she moved the wedding to the hospital
A large guest list. A pretty California venue. An elaborate dress.
These were the things Vieneese Stanton originally thought she wanted in a
wedding when she and her fiance got engaged in February.
The couple tentatively chose a day in April 2018 — far off enough to allow
them to save gradually for their dream ceremony. And perhaps it would give her
father time to get healthy.
Just three days before their engagement, her father, Preston Rolan, had been
diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia. Soon, he was making monthly visits to
UCSF Medical Center in San Francisco for blood transfusions and chemotherapy.
The treatments sapped his energy — but Rolan, who was living in Richmond,
Calif., with his daughter and her fiance, was always able to come home after
each hospital trip.
“My dad is definitely a fighter,” Stanton, 27, told The Washington Post. To
keep his spirits up, they frequently talked about the upcoming wedding and how
much he was looking forward to walking his “favorite daughter” down the
aisle.
Rolan is the one who “freely tells everybody” that she is, indeed, the
favorite of four siblings.
“It wasn’t just me bragging,” she said, laughing. “My mom used to say, ‘You
can’t have favorites.’
He would say, ‘Well, I got a favorite, so you
figure it out.’ ”
While Rolan is technically Stanton’s stepfather, in her eyes, he is simply
“Dad.” He and her mother met when Stanton was 3 years old. For as long as she
can remember, Rolan has been her “No. 1 cheerleader,” the one who took her to
Disneyland and the one who hollered the loudest at her graduation from the
University of California at Davis several years ago.
When her mother died eight years ago, it was Stanton who continued to check
in with her and vice versa.
“He’s definitely raised me all of my life,” Stanton said. “For me, he was
like the closest thing I had, the first father I knew. We just connected from
the beginning. . . . I can always call him. And if he ever needed anything, he
knew to call me.”
During her father’s August hospital visit, however, doctors discovered an
infection that had spread to his lungs. They kept him for further evaluation,
then surgery.
Days became a week, and the weeks stretched into more than two months.
In October, doctors at UCSF pulled Stanton aside: Rolan’s cancer wasn’t
responding to chemotherapy treatments, and the infection had almost completely
filled his right lung. This time, he probably wouldn’t be going home, they told
her.
“That’s when they started talking about hospice,” she said. “It was very,
very emotional for me to have that conversation with the doctors.”
By then, Stanton had also found out she was pregnant and expecting her first
child in March. The additional desire to meet his grandchild had given Rolan
extra motivation to persist through the most grueling of treatments, but Stanton
knew it was unlikely her father would make it to both of the milestones.
“I told my fiance, ‘We gotta change the wedding,’ ” she said. “I said, he has
to be there for at least one of these moments. It’s the two things he has been
looking forward to.”
The couple soon sprang into action to move their wedding up by five months.
Fortunately, they hadn’t yet put a deposit down on a venue they were eyeing. A
large guest list was whittled down to 15 or so family members and close friends
who could accompany them to city hall on Nov. 16, a Thursday.
Stanton and her fiance figured they would stop by UCSF Medical Center first
that morning so that Rolan, who couldn’t leave the hospital, could at least see
his daughter in a wedding dress.
That was before the hospital staff caught wind of Stanton’s plans to surprise
her dad.
“They literally just skyrocketed the idea completely,” Stanton said. “They
literally made it an actual wedding.”
A nurse with a side passion for photography volunteered to document the
hospital wedding. Others brought decorations and food, filling a room on the
hospital floor with paper flowers, streamers, hors-d'oeuvres, desserts and even
tiny wedding favors in bride- and groom-themed boxes. A harpist and a guitarist
provided the music.
On the morning of the surprise, dozens of nurses filled the floor. Some had
come in on their day off. One helped Rolan change into a fresh Oakland Raiders
T-shirt and sweatpants. He assumed he was going on one of his usual walks around
the hospital floor.
Just after 10 a.m., Stanton and her fiance arrived at the hospital. In her
simple, strapless ruched gown, she sneaked up to her father’s floor, and the
nurses scrambled to retrieve him.
Slowly, Rolan ambled down the hallway; a nurse walked with him, holding his
chest tube. As he rounded a corner, he stopped in his tracks at the sight of a
woman in a bridal gown and a veil, clutching a bouquet of flowers.
Then, he realized: It was his daughter.
“He was just like, ‘Oh my God!’ It was so cute,” Stanton recalled. “You could
see him holding back tears. His face just lit up.”
Linking arms, they turned around and walked back down the hall, past the
nurses who had cared for Rolan over the past several months. They cheered and
clapped, and Rolan and his daughter beamed.
Behind them, one of Stanton’s
bridesmaids managed to record everything with two cellphones, while clutching a
wad of tissues.
In the room the nurses had decorated, their 15 guests and a bevy of nurses
celebrated over cake and refreshments. A hospital chaplain — who had spent the
past few months praying, singing and reading scripture with Rolan — led the room
in a lively rendition of “Isn’t She Lovely?”
Taking the floor, Rolan choked up as he talked about how proud he was of his
grown children. His daughter looked even more beautiful than the day she
graduated from college, he said.
“You set me up,” he told the room, to laughter. “I’m 64. I might make another
64.”
But for now, he added, he was just happy for his daughter.
Stanton and her fiance dashed off to City Hall shortly after the hospital
ceremony.
“It was definitely the perfect way to start our day off,” she said. “We were
extremely excited, just kind of on cloud nine.”
Stanton said she and her now-husband, Douglas Stanton, are relishing the time
they have with her father before he moves to hospice care, probably in the next
few weeks.
“He’s so full of life. You can see that in the video,” she said. “So this is
all very bittersweet. We are definitely forever grateful to have those moments.
We just want to celebrate these last few weeks we have with him.”
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