Wish Upon a Wedding: The Nonprofit Making Sure Love Gets Its Day

By Amelia Paradysz

Wish Upon a Wedding: The Nonprofit Making Sure Love Gets Its Day

Our Role as the Flower Preservationist for this Deserving Couple

There is a particular kind of unfairness in being told you have limited time and also being told a wedding is out of reach.

That is the gap Wish Upon a Wedding exists to close. The national nonprofit grants weddings and vow renewals to couples facing terminal illness or life-altering health circumstances, at almost no cost to the couple. Not a scaled-down version of a wedding. Not a consolation. A real one, with a venue and a photographer and flowers and a first dance, planned and paid for by an industry that shows up on purpose.

We have now had the honor of being part of that twice. We want to use this space to talk about the organization itself, because we think more people in this industry should know how it works and how easy it is to join.

How it started

In 2009, a San Francisco event planner named Liz Guthrie organized a dream wedding giveaway. The couple who won were Air Force officers, and the bride was in treatment for stage IV Hodgkin's lymphoma. Local businesses and wedding professionals donated the entire celebration. Watching what a hundred small donations added up to for one family made the case on its own, and Wish Upon a Wedding was formed later that year.

What began as one wedding has become a national organization operating in all 50 states and DC, more than 375 wishes have been granted, and roughly over 1000 wedding professionals donate goods and services every year. It is consistently recognized as the leading nonprofit in the wedding industry, and it is worth saying plainly why: almost nothing about the model requires cash. It requires the wedding industry to give away one day on a Sunday to a Thursday..

How a wish actually works

The structure is deliberately simple.

A couple applies through the organization when illness or a life altering diagnosis has made planning a wedding impossible, financially, physically, or both. Wish Upon a Wedding reviews the application, interviews them, and once paperwork is completed and they are approved there Program Manager finds a planner local to the couple to source a team of wedding professionals to donate their service and make a Wish Day happen. Those volunteers are called Wish Granters, and they donate their product or service outright.

Weddings are held Sunday through Thursday with a guest list of up to 50, which is what keeps the model sustainable for the vendors who give their time. The couple's job is not to plan. Their job is to keep going to treatment, and to spend time with the people they love. Someone else handles the rest.

For a couple and family navigating a terminal or life-altering diagnosis, a Wish is so much more than a wedding or vow renewal. It is a light during an incredibly dark time - a chance to step away from treatments, illness and doctor’s appointments for one extraordinary day centered on love, joy and hope. It allows them to focus on what matters most: celebrating their love and creating lasting memories together.

Our second wish

Earlier this year we were asked back as the floral preservation Wish Granter for a wedding outside Philadelphia. We are keeping the details of this family private, and we are only sharing images that do not identify them.

What we will say is this. This wish was for a family navigating serious illness together, and it included children. So the preservation work was not one piece for the couple. It was pieces for every immediate family member, the children included, each one made from the same flowers that stood in that room on that day.

That distinction matters more than it might sound. A bouquet becomes a single object by default, and a single object eventually belongs to one person. Splitting one set of flowers into pieces that each family member could hold onto meant that every one of them walked out with the same day, in their own hands. The children have something they will still have when they are adults. That was the whole point, and it is the reason we said yes before we knew any of the logistics.

We are not going to tell that family's story here. As the flower preservationist, their story is not ours to tell. It’s our job to turn their blooms into family heirlooms. We will only say that the flowers were beautiful, the room was full, and we were lucky to be a very small part of it.

The vendors who made this wish happen

None of this works without a full team donating at once. Every one of these businesses gave their work to this couple.

If you work in weddings, you are already qualified

This is the part we most want people to take away.

Wish Upon a Wedding does not need you to be big. It needs you to be willing, once, in your own city. If you photograph, plan, bake, style, play, print, pour, or arrange, you can sign up as a Wish Granter and donate to one wedding in your area. You choose how often. 

If you are not in the industry, the organization runs on donations and volunteers too, including the annual Blissful Wishes Ball in Chicago.

Learn more or apply to become a Wish Granter at wishuponawedding.org.

If you or someone you love is facing a serious diagnosis and a wedding feels out of reach, you can apply for a wish at wishuponawedding.org/apply.

Why we keep saying yes

We spend most of our days with flowers that have already done their job. A bouquet arrives at our studio after the day is over, and our work is to make sure that day stays somewhere a person can reach it.

Usually that is a happy assignment. Occasionally it is a heavier one. When we preserve flowers from memorials, their sentimentality hits a different nerve. The flowers preserved from a memorial, or in the instance of a Wish Upon a Wedding day, will be cherished as a reminder of the love that was held so closely within a family. 

Our craft is designed to create fine art as a lifetime memento from the very booms that loved ones are surrounded by on a special day. Whether from a wedding, baby shower, memorial, birthday party, or graduation- the flowers are the symbol of these moments, and they deserve to be carried on for generations.

 

Wish Upon a Wedding makes those days happen for people who were told they might not get one. Being asked to help those days last is the best use of our hands we can think of. We are grateful to have been asked twice, and we will say yes every time.