AUGUSTA, Ga. (WRDW/WAGT) – It’s often known to expect the unexpected on your wedding day.
Toccoa natives Preston and Tanesha Cobb had every detail of their wedding planned out, from flowers to venue to the guest list. Everything changed on June 30 after a chemical spill accident landed Preston at the JMS Burn Center at Doctors Hospital.
Tanesha hasn’t left Preston’s side and with the accident happening so close to their wedding day, it didn’t look like the couple would exchange vows on July 22.
Mary Cook, a JMS Burn Center nurse, overheard the couple’s wedding conversations and decided to get creative. She gathered a group of nurses to get food, a DJ, flowers and a venue set up.
Cook approached the couple with her idea and it was an instant yes.
“I was like, ‘Man, she’s not going to want to marry me,’” Preston said. “I’m not the same person that asked her to marry me.”
Their love now is stronger than ever.
“There’s nothing that would stop me from marrying him,” Tanesha said. “Nothing. I knew that this day would come. I didn’t think it would be like this.”
The day almost didn’t happen.
“I literally watched the skin from my elbow like detach and literally just go to dust and crumble,” Preston said. “I literally felt like that was going to be the end.”
He is far from the end. Through it all, he has his bride next to his side.
“Even though my condition, it still didn’t stop me from marrying the woman of my dreams,” Preston said.
The nurses at the JMS Burn Center brought the couple to the chapel.
“I wanted to give him something positive out of all this negative,” Cook said. “Preston was adamant that he was not going to change his wedding date.”
He didn’t have to change the date.
“She was like, ‘I got good news for you,’” Preston said. “And I was like, ‘What’s that?’ and she was like, ‘You’re getting married on the 22nd.’”
The newlyweds now truly understand what for better or for worse means.