When 28-year-old Ryan Miller proposed to Lindsay Saunders, 19, in August last year, the loved-up Texas couple decided they would wait until the time was right to get married.
But when doctors noticed an ominous mass in Ryan's right lung in August this year their walk down the aisle became a race against time.
Ryan had an Ewing's Sarcoma — an aggressive tumor that occurs in bones or soft tissues.
On December 5, Ryan's family was told to start thinking about end of life plans, and marrying his fiance was his first priority.
"We were going to wait a little while until we had a house and everything was financially stable, but then this happened," Lindsay said.
"He told me that he did not want to die without having been married to me and I didn't want him to pass without it either."
The couple wed on December 6 in a ten minute ceremony at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Texas, where Ryan is in residence taking specialised treatment.
Doctors believe the chemotherapy he is now undertaking gives him a 40 percent chance of recovering, but his unstable condition had his family concerned he might not make it to his wedding day.
Thankfully, the wedding went ahead with the intimate ceremony being performed by a hospital chaplain with the couple's family looking on.
"We were just thrilled and honestly we didn't know that we would get there and be able to go to a wedding," said Lindsay's mother.
Now the happily-married newlyweds are enjoying their time together, and hope that Ryan's treatment will see him through to February, when a new treatment that could help his recovery is due to be approved.
"Some days are just so great where he's up and he's smiling and he's walking around the room and some days he's just not looking so good. But for those days that he smiles, it's just the best," Lindsay said.
"You just only live in the moment and that moment was just absolutely amazing."
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