This Bride Went To Great Lengths For Her Dad’s Last Wish

Kaila Kirby dreamed of her wedding, which was being planned for July 2016. But part of the dream was in jeopardy — her father, Jubal Kirby, was ill and might not make it until the big day. So she threw her plans into an uproar to make sure her dad would be present. The day before Thanksgiving, Kaila and her fiancé, Daniel Pardue, stood in her father’s hospital room in Carolinas Medical Center in North Carolina and exchanged their vows by the side of his bed. A group of fifty friends and relatives squeezed into the tiny room to hear the couple tie the knot. “[I] just kind of wanted my Dad to give me away on my wedding day,” the bride told WBTV. Hospital workers organized around the family to provide the occasion with all the traditional accoutrements. A collection among staff raised money for fresh flowers and a wedding cake, and the hospital’s chaplain played guitar and sang. Jubal Kirby has a rapidly progressing form of lung fibrosis, which makes it difficult for him to breathe. It was only in recent weeks that it became clear that he might not live to attend his daughter’s wedding. Kaila and Daniel’s ceremony wasn’t the only wedding that Jubal Kirby had waited for. The Charlotte Observer reports that only a week ago, there was another wedding in the same hospital room — that of Jubal Kirby himself. He married Kaila’s mother, Colleen. The couple have been together for 26 years, but never bothered to marry. When it became clear that his illness was serious, they decided it was time. Colleen’s elder daughter, Jessica Harrison, told the Observer, “He said he wanted to make an honest woman out of her.”