Couple gets married at hospital right before baby’s birth

Babies will arrive into the world whenever they’re ready — even if it throws everyone else’s plans into disarray. And when Sara Perry’s water broke on Feb. 13, she was just three days away from getting married.

Perry, a 39-year-old police officer, woke up that morning and realized she needed to get to a hospital, stat. She was 35 weeks pregnant at the time. She and her husband Brandon had planned their wedding for Friday, Feb. 16, figuring they still had several weeks before her due date.

“We wanted to be married before our son was born,” Brandon Perry told local news station KMBC.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t going to be possible. Workers at St. Luke’s East Hospital in Lee’s Summit, Missouri, told Sara she’d likely still be there on Feb. 16, missing her own nuptials.

MORE: This mom used a Nerf gun to wake up her husband to help care for their newborn baby at the hospital

However, a solution presented itself. Sara explained that the nurses started talking, and another expecting patient had a husband who was an ordained minister. He offered to marry the couple right then and there — while he was waiting for his own child to be born.

“And so their nurse came back and told our nurse [and] our nurse came in and told us,” Sara told “Good Morning America.” “She was like, ‘I know this sounds crazy. But if you’d like, we can have an ordained minister that’s having a baby down the hall come and marry you two.'”

This set into motion a flurry of activity, detailed on this Facebook post from the hospital:

Fortunately, the Perrys already had their marriage license on hand in their truck, so they were ready to go. The maternity care team found decor for the couple’s room, created a veil from gauze, arranged for a bouquet from flowers decorating the hospital for Valentine’s Day, and got a wedding cake from the cafeteria.

Sara even fashioned her hospital bedsheet into a toga-like white dress.

MORE: According to science, there’s no such thing as holding your baby too much

The ceremony lasted 30 minutes, and Sara was experiencing contractions the entire time. Then, baby Oliver came at 1:47 a.m. on Valentine’s Day, capping off a very sweet few hours for the newly expanded family, which also includes Sara’s five-year-old son Sebastian.

“I literally blinked, and I was married and a dad within 12 hours,” Brandon Perry told KMBC. “It’s just a feeling of comfort and love and warmth instantaneously.”