For brides who have two dads they love, one problem often bubbles up as wedding day approaches: how do you get them both involved in the wedding?
How an Ohio family approached that problem is being recognized all over the world.
“It crossed my mind every time we tried on tuxedoes… we did this and we did that and I was like, ‘Man I’m putting on a tux for what? To sit in the crowd,’” said Todd Cendrosky, the bride’s step-father.
As everyone was awaiting the wedding march, the bride’s biological dad walked up to the wedding photographer and told her that he was going to do something special, and to be ready.
“For me to thank him for all the years wouldn’t justify, but obviously the picture showed the moment,” said Todd Bachmann, the bride’s biological father.
Cendrosky felt a tug at his arm when the music was cued up.
“He came up to me,” Cendrosky said. “Reached out and grabbed my hand and said, ‘You worked as hard as I have.’ He said, ‘You deserve this as much as I do, you’ll help us walk our daughter down the aisle.’ At that point I had no clue what was going on.”
“There’s no better way to say ‘thank you’ to somebody than to assist me walking our daughter down the aisle,” Bachman said.
Merging two families was not always well received. For 14 years, tough patches emerged.
“It hasn’t always been peaches and cream, by any stretch of the imagination,” Bachman said.
But never in his imagination could they foresee their story going viral, photos seen over 15 million times in 24 hours.
More than 29 million people have looked at the photos on Facebook and hundreds of thousands more have shared them.
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