Home Burns to Ground Hours Before Wedding. Bride & Groom Escape with Dress & Ring
Most brides and grooms expect to face a few bumps in the road on their wedding day. It’s incredibly rare to experience totally smooth sailing, and hiccups are bound to take place.
You might expect the flowers to be the wrong color or the food to be running late, or to have a family member get lost on the way to the ceremony — but having the house catch on fire and losing all your earthly possessions? That one’s not usually on the list.
Matthew and Coral Denakins got to face the “for richer or poorer” bit of their vows before they’d even officially uttered them.
The night before their wedding, they and 15 family members were staying at Coral’s parents’ house. Unfortunately, a fire started in the garage.
“The room was filled with smoke, there was lots of commotion,” Matthew said.
Fortunately, the parents woke up at 2:30 a.m. and realized what was happening, and everyone managed to escape unharmed.
“I grabbed my truck keys, my wallet and my wedding ring,” Matthew said. “I grabbed the few things I could and ran outside.”
“My mom was running around screaming for everyone to get out,” Coral said. “Nobody really had any shoes or anything on.”
Shoes were one of the things she lost — her wedding shoes, to be exact. Her dress was saved, as was her ring, but everything else went up in flames.
“Firefighters had said if my parents had not caught it when they did, then the roof would have collapsed with us in it. We got lucky, we are extremely lucky,” Coral said.
But the show had to go on, so the bride and groom found replacements for the items that had been burned, and they were off!
“It was about eight hours, not even, post-fire that everyone was dressed up,” Matthew said.
Even though no lives were lost, prized possessions and the start of the Denakins’ life were.
The fire took everything. Their household belongings and gifts were ashes, and the fire even claimed a few of the cars parked there. It will be a while before they can regroup.
“Every time I went in, I just cry and cry because it looks awful,” Coral said. “We are very grateful that everyone made it out OK.”
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