Jennifer Darmon’s dreams of walking down the aisle were shattered in 2008 when she was tragically paralyzed after a car accident.
Jennifer’s love story first began in 2006 when she was working as a bank teller in Windsor, Canada. A soft-spoken paramedic named Mike Belawetz met Jennifer while she was working, and it wasn’t long before he was ‘banking’ up to three times a week to see her.
“Obviously she’s a very, very pretty girl, which was the main attraction,” he told ABC News, and that “kept me going to the bank.”
After dating for a couple of years, the young couple fell in love. In 2008, Jennifer and Mike were on a road trip with friends when their van struck a car head-on. Mike and their friends were able to escape the van, but Jennifer was unable to move.
Since Mike is a paramedic, he immediately got to work trying to free her from the wreckage. When her soon-to-be fiance pulled her from the van, he felt her spine and immediately knew something was very wrong. Sheer panic set in for Jennifer.
After arriving at the hospital, doctors told Jennifer that she would never walk again.
After breaking the news to Jennifer, she understood that she had been through something very traumatic; but, she refused to believe that she’d never walk again. She was determined to do everything in her power to walk down the aisle to the person that saved her life.
Shortly after the accident, Jennifer and Mike were chosen as the “World News People of the Week,” during that interview, she made a promise that she was going to walk again.
“You know, picturing your wedding, you don’t picture rolling down the aisle,” she said. “You picture the walk with your dad. It’s the most important thing. I will be walking down the aisle. It’s not an if or a maybe. It’s absolutely going to happen.”
Jennifer was going to have a long road ahead of her with multiple surgeries and physical therapy sessions, but Mike stayed by her side during the entire process.
“I told him a few times, ‘You don’t have to stay if this is something you don’t think you want in your life for the rest of your life,'” Jennifer said. “I figured that I would spare him.”
It was too late for Jennifer though, Mike was head over heels, and he wasn’t going anywhere. In fact, he ended up proposing on their 4-year anniversary in 2010. Through every single surgery and therapy appointment, he stayed by her side.
Finally, the big day had arrived. When the door to the chapel opened, wedding guests were stunned to see how far Jennifer had come. After years in a wheelchair, she made good on her promise to walk down the aisle.
“I’m proud of my wife,” Mike told WXYZ, the ABC affiliate in Detroit, after his wedding. “Her accomplishments and it just feels really great to be here today.”
Watch more on Jennifer’s inspiring and heartwarming story below.
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