Nurses plan ceremony, sew wedding gown for new mom married at the hospital

When Brianna Lucca-Cerezo got sick with RSV at eight months pregnant, it meant having her baby a few weeks early — and canceling her wedding.

“We had plans to get married at City Hall the next day, but the baby had other plans,” Lucca-Cerezo laughed.

When the nurses at AdventHealth for Women found out about the scrapped nuptials, they decided to improvise. “I thought maybe we could get a chaplain to get them married, so I made some calls, and the universe all worked out,” said Elvia Birnholz, an RN of over 40 years.

Within a few hours, the nursing team had thrown together an impromptu ceremony right there on the labor and delivery unit — complete with flowers from the gift shop, speakers playing “Let’s Get Married,” and a chaplain to officiate. Luckily, Lucca-Cerezo had the wedding bands and marriage certificate in her hospital bag.

“It was very different than what I expected my wedding to be, but I’m honestly happy with the way it happened,” Lucca-Cerezo said. “All the nurses chipped in.”

The cherry on top was a custom-made wedding gown, sewn from bed sheets and sutures by one of the nurses, Gaby Pinzon.

“She walked in with a bunch of blankets, sheets and pillowcases and asked if she could make me a wedding dress,” Lucca-Cerezo said. “I showed her a picture of the dress I’d ordered, and she just started cutting everything up and sewing it together with the sutures. And within 30 minutes, we had a wedding dress.”

Reminiscing on her own wedding, Pinzon said it was important to her for Lucca-Cerezo to feel beautiful on her special day. “I thought to myself, ‘There’s no way she’s getting married in a hospital gown. I will not let that happen.’”

“I felt so fortunate that I even had the opportunity to be a witness at somebody's wedding at my job but to also be the person who got to dress the bride,” Pinzon continued. “That’s definitely something I’m going to carry with me and it’s going to be one of the highlights of my career.”

Two days later, instead of a honeymoon, Lucca-Cerezo and her husband Luis welcomed a healthy baby boy and named him Landon Irvin Cerezo.

The new mom said she’ll always remember how the nurses at AdventHealth for Women cared for her during the two happiest moments of her life — the day she got married and the day she delivered her first baby.

“How everyone came together, you feel like the only patient in the whole hospital,” she said. “If we have another, we’re definitely coming to AdventHealth.”

AdventHealth for Women is a nationally recognized women’s hospital and care network that delivers more than 17,000 babies annually across 13 OB/GYN delivery locations in Central Florida.