Helping Couples Facing Illness
By ERIC V. COPAGE
WISH UPON A WEDDING, a nonprofit organization that provides free weddings for couples in which one partner is terminally ill (or both), was started in 2010 by Liz Guthrie, a former wedding planner who is now the organization’s executive director.
“I was looking for a way to give back to the community,” said Ms. Guthrie, 42. In 2009, she organized a $100,000 wedding giveaway in San Francisco, which was “only given to one couple,” she recalled. “It kind of bummed me out because I thought there were lots of couples deserving of a wedding.”
To date, Wish Upon a Wedding, which has 23 chapters nationwide and relies primarily on donations of time and materials from vendors, has provided weddings for 47 couples. It operates without regard to their sexual orientation.
The reasons couples choose to marry, even when their time together may be short, vary.
“The idea of going through a whole ceremony and cementing that bond was a very spiritual thing for me,” said Alexis Kidd, 42, of Houston, who has cancer of the diaphragm. Wish Upon a Wedding provided her wedding last November to Christian Kidd, 57. “It was a celebration of how we felt about each other.”
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My questions for you: did you and your partner marry or have a commitment ceremony knowing one of you had an illness? To what extent did you talk about how the illness would impact your lives?
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