By Abimbola Ogunnaike
An ailing groom, who organised a spontaneous hospital wedding with his partner after being told he did not have much longer to live, died the day after the marriage.
Ryan Dack had been planning to get hitched to Rosie, his girlfriend of three years, in August – but a devastating diagnosis at the end of last month meant he was forced to act quickly.
The 30-year-old had Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a genetic disorder that causes the progressive degeneration of muscle, and was told a few weeks ago that he had developed pneumonia.
On June 25, doctors at Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital told him there was nothing more they could do and just hours later, Ryan and Rosie got married beside his hospital bed.
Rosie, 25, said her fiancé had turned to his career not long after receiving the news, and said: ‘I need to get married. I got to the hospital around 3am and he told me that he wouldn’t be here for much longer and in that moment, I thought that our wedding had been taken.
‘Instead he said, “So, we are getting married today.”
‘And sure enough, by 8.45am we were saying our vows.’
The impromptu ceremony was attended by friends and family, and though Rosie was unable to wear her dress as it was still being fitted, she said it meant more than any glitzy occasion could.
She said: ‘I look back on our wedding, we didn’t have the big, beautiful dress and four-tiered cake, suits and ties.But we had each other.
‘We had our families around us and that was better and more sentimental, it meant more to us than a big fairytale wedding.’
Rosie, who has Gorham-Stout disease affecting her bone formation, first met Ryan in 2014, when they were both playing wheelchair football together.
The pair made a pact that they would become a couple if both of them were single by 2020 – so Ryan asked his future wife out on New Year’s Eve 2019.
‘Wheelchair football is something we were both really passionate about, it brings all different peoples and abilities onto a court.
‘It made us feel independent and allowed us to express ourselves – we owe our whole relationship to the sport,” she said.
Rosie has asked for donations in memory of Ryan be made to the Community Sports Foundation (CSF), which supports the Norwich City Powerchair team they both played for.
Source: Metro UK
