For Dying Mom, Couple Plans Wedding in 24 Hours

By Gary Jeanfaivre

A hospital certainly wasn't Aly Femia's venue of choice for her wedding, but when doctors said her terminally ill mother may not make it another day it set off a series of events that has touched people's hearts around the world.

Aly and her fiance Anthony decided they would not wait till 2015 to tie the knot as originally planned. They would get married the next day in her mother's room at Yale-New Haven Hospital in Connecticut. 

Her mother, Mary Quinn, has been diagnosed with incurable cancer that has spread from her lungs to her brain, reports the website BuzzFeed, in an article that has been read by more than 500,000 people. And Aly, whose dad died when she was younger, wanted nothing more than for her mother to be there when she married the love of her life.

So less than 24 hours later, on Jan. 29, Aly married Anthony. 

The doctors and nurses who are treating her mother also helped make the wedding a reality — they donated food and flowers, and even offered to take her dress shopping.

"The hospital was INCREDIBLE!," Aly told BuzzFeed staffer Krystie Lee Yandoli, who graduated with Aly from Greenwich High Schoolin 2008. "They made my wedding possible."

“My favorite part of the day was having my mom see me in my wedding dress wearing a string of her pearls, and seeing her smile,” Aly said.

To see photos from the day, check out the article on BuzzFeed.