Bride-To-Be, 29, Dies Of COVID-19 After Delaying Vaccine: Reports

LISLE, IL — Samantha Wendell, 29, was eager to start a family with her fiancé after their wedding, planned for this summer. Wendell, formerly of Lisle, postponed getting a coronavirus vaccine amid erroneous concerns that it might cause infertility. She never made it to the altar, and some of her family members believe "misinformation killed her."

Wendell's funeral was held Saturday at Trinity Lutheran Church in Lisle, where her parents live and where she and Austin Eskew were set to walk down the aisle Aug. 21, according to the couple's wedding website on The Knot.

Ahead of the wedding, Wendell, who lived in Kentucky, eventually changed her mind amid increasing restrictions for unvaccinated people and scheduled a vaccine for late July. But before her appointment, she and Eskew returned from a trip to Nashville, and she began coughing incessantly, NBC reported.

She and Eskew, both of whom had no underlying medical conditions, tested positive for the coronavirus shortly after.

Wendell's symptoms worsened, and she was hospitalized and then put on a ventilator Aug. 16, the Washington Post reported. Wendell was taken off life support and died Sept. 10.

After Wendell's death, her family members took to social media to encourage people to get the COVID-19 vaccine.

"We said goodbye to my 29-year-old cousin, Samantha, today," cousin Maria Vibandor Hayes wrote in a Facebook group called Survivor Corps. "We were supposed to see her walk down the aisle two weeks ago. She was supposed to be on her honeymoon. She was supposed to bring beautiful babies into this world. In the coming days, my flight home will be for her funeral. She was unvaccinated. She was worried about her fertility. Misinformation killed her."

A GoFundMe has been started to help Wendell's family cover funeral costs. You can donate to Samantha Wendell's GoFundMe here.