Ceremony saved after traffic accident derails wedding plans

Published 10:39 pm Saturday, April 25, 2009

Give her time. Someday, Shahnaaz Davis will surely remember April 18 as a beautiful day. It was her wedding day, after all.

For now, who could blame the 22-year-old bride for seeing that day as a glass half-empty?

“It was a very bad day,” she said last week. “I had a one-in-a- million dress, a traditional Indian sari. It’s so sad. I’ll never get that day back.”

The bride wore sweats — black sweatpants, a zip-up sweatshirt and green flip-flops. That’s not the worst of it.

When Shahnaaz Mahtab married 24-year-old Michael Davis in a hospital chapel, she was reeling from a car accident earlier that day in Marysville. The young woman is also pregnant with the couple’s first child, and both expectant parents were fearful for their baby.

“The doctor had checked her out, and we checked the baby out. We did an ultrasound,” said Nicole Georgian, an emergency department nurse at the Pacific campus of Providence Regional Medical Center Everett. “Everything looked OK.”

At the end of the day, that’s what mattered. Ask Georgian, and she’ll say Mahtab was a beautiful bride, even without a bejeweled dress. “She looked so great. She’d had her hair and makeup done,” the nurse said.

Backing up a few hours, Mahtab had gone to Alderwood mall that morning with a close friend. She’d had her hair styled at Gene Juarez salon in preparation for her wedding, which was set for 1:30 p.m. at Everett Municipal Court.

Mahtab said she was driving her 2006 Nissan Altima to her mother’s home in Marysville when her car was rear-ended by a truck on 88th Street NE, near the Marysville Cemetery. Her friend was driving in a separate car and was also involved in the accident, she said.

“My friend came to a stop, a car in front came to stop, and I came to a stop. Two or three seconds later, I got hit,” she said. “I get hit so hard, my car rams into my best friend’s car.” The Marysville Police Department confirmed the location and time of the accident, but officers were unavailable Friday to give details.

Shahnaaz Davis said her family was stunned when they saw her crumpled car as they drove along the same street on their way to the wedding.

And Michael Davis? “I wasn’t there yet,” said the groom, who was leaving his Everett home for his wedding when the accident happened. “When I got the call, I went straight to the hospital,” he said.

Everett Municipal Court Judge David Mitchell, meanwhile, was waiting and wondering where the wedding party could be. “It was a beautiful Saturday afternoon. They had all these people coming,” said Mitchell, who learned the news when the bride called from the hospital.

As Mahtab and her friend were being treated, the judge and wedding guests migrated to the hospital. “They kicked us out,” said Mitchell, explaining that more than 20 people gathered in Mahtab’s room, hospital staff wouldn’t allow the big group to stay.

Mitchell had left the hospital when he received another call — the wedding was on after all, but in the hospital’s Our Lady of Compassion Chapel. Many guests had come from out of town.

Hospital spokeswoman Cheri Russum said neither she nor Tim Serban, director of mission and spiritual care at Providence, can recall the chapel being used for a wedding before. There was even wedding cake. “One of the admitting ladies had made a really big baby shower cake, and brought some down for the couple,” Georgian said.

Mitchell hasn’t officiated at any other hospital weddings, but last weekend’s nuptials are not the most unusual he’s performed. “At one, the bride and groom were in separate helicopters, and I was in another helicopter,” he said. Mitchell also performed a wedding for skydivers — he stayed on the ground.

The judge shared some of the words he spoke during the hospital ceremony: “Marriage is the ultimate expression of love. … It is quiet understanding, mutual confidence, sharing and forgiving. It is loyalty through good and bad times.”

Wedding details matter. As a soon-to-be mother of a bride, I know that. Compared to the marriage, those wedding details matter very little. With their lives and a family ahead of them, Shahnaaz and Michael Davis know that. They also know they are blessed. Although she’s still hurting from the accident, Shahnaaz and their baby are safe.

Georgian knew right away that the bride’s bad day was a happy day. “We see so many bad things,” the nurse said. “It was nice to see people come out of a situation like that.”

Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460, muhlstein@heraldnet.com.