In Sickness and in Health

Jim Porter had long dreamed of giving his wife, Patty, the kind of fairy-tale wedding she never had. The two had exchanged vows Jan. 2, 1974, in a simple ceremony at a small church in Orange, the city where they now live.

The couple married just two months after they met, for no other reason than they were crazy in love.

“It was a little bit of an elopement. I was 23 and she was 18,” says Jim, now 47. “We didn’t have much of a wedding.”

Patty wore a wedding dress she had borrowed from her sister-in-law. There were just four people in attendance, including Jim’s best friend and Patty’s brother. There was no fancy reception.

Jim never felt right about that. He thought Patty deserved the kind of wedding-with- all-the-trimmings that girls dream about. He figured that for their 25th anniversary--which would fall in 1999--he’d plan something really special.

Then came the diagnosis.

In early 1995 doctors told Jim he had Lou Gehrig’s disease, a degenerative nervous system disorder for which there is no cure. They estimated that he had six months to a year to live. What they didn’t factor in was that Jim had some unfinished business.

He had a wedding to plan.

A surprise wedding.

Shortly after the diagnosis, he began planning the ceremony at which he and Patty, now 42, would renew their vows. He would handle all the details without Patty knowing a thing.

Planning a wedding is a major undertaking for even the healthiest of people; for someone whose hands tremble and whose walk has become stiff because of encroaching paralysis, it’s crazy.

But, as Patty would later say: “He’s always doing something crazy.”

Jim, a retired owner of a sporting goods store in Norco, was hardly prepared for his role as wedding planner. Yet he did everything from picking the flowers to helping sew bridesmaids’ dresses--despite his weakening hands and the fact he’d never used a sewing machine in his life.

“I keep doing things to prove it can be done,” he says.

“My disease is not in remission. Eighty percent of people with Lou Gehrig’s die within two years of diagnosis, and 95% die within five years,” he says.

“I’m real weak and I have difficulty walking, but you live with it. The worst thing you can do is challenge me. I won’t lie down and let it get to me.”

*

Setting their second wedding date was one of his first orders of business.

“There’s no guarantee I’ll be here for our 25th,” he says simply. Their 24th anniversary--Jan. 2, 1998--became the date.

The ceremony would be in Carthage, Mo., at the Precious Moments Chapel. Throughout their marriage, whenever Jim traveled he would buy Patty a Precious Moments statue, waiflike figurines that now fill several curio cabinets in their home.

On a three-month cross-country trip shortly after Jim’s diagnosis, they visited the chapel, which figurine creator Sam Butcher has filled with murals and stained-glass scenes of the waifs with their “teardrop eyes,” as Patty calls them. The Porters met Butcher, who signed some of their figurines.

On another cross-country tour Jim took by himself in May 1997, he reserved the quaint little church for the ceremony he was planning.

The chapel’s wedding coordinator advised him on cakes, flowers, photographers and vocalists.

Jim wanted the works--and he wanted it to happen unbeknown to Patty.

“I kept going out and getting money orders so she wouldn’t see the checks,” he says.

He also wanted to give his wife a 1-carat diamond ring (“because every woman should have a 1-carat diamond, and not one that weighs .999 carats, either,” he says). Jim knew nothing about diamonds, but he found help from a jeweler friend and bought a simple ring with the requisite 1-carat stone.

Searching for bridesmaids’ dresses for daughters Andrea, 20, and Jessica, 18, proved more complicated. As both daughters warned him, most bridesmaids dresses are truly awful. Jim took them shopping but after one-too-many taffetas decided to call off the hunt.

“We were out looking at dress shops, and they were walking my legs off,” he says. “Finally I said, ‘Why don’t you make your dresses?’ ”

“Dad, we can’t sew,” the women responded.

“I can,” Jim told them.

“Dad, you can’t sew,” they said. Which was true. But Jim figured he could learn.

*

They found a simple pattern for an off-the-shoulder gown and yards of burgundy satin. Jim traded a copier for his sister’s sewing machine. The first time he fed fabric under the needle, his stitches came out so perfect that his sister was incredulous. Jim was triumphant.

“I knew there was a talent,” he jokes. “No one could believe these dresses are coming out the way they are but, boom, I’m doing them.”

He tried sewing whenever Patty was away at her job as a secretary to the president of a carpet manufacturing company. When she caught him at the machine and asked what in the world he was doing, he told her he was making a bridesmaid’s dress for a niece.

“He’s always doing weird things--you don’t ask,” Patty says.

Jim kept sewing, even though his hands hurt. Only when it looked like he wouldn’t finish the gowns in time did his sister help him.

He even considered sewing Patty a wedding gown but decided the materials would cost more than an off-the-rack dress. The search was on for the perfect gown. Like a would-be bride, he visited bridal salon after bridal salon looking at gowns. His daughters would try them on and weigh in with their opinions.

“This is too big. This is too little. This isn’t Mom,” they would tell him. Their selection was limited because the gown couldn’t be special-ordered; that would take three to six months, and Jim was running out of time. Eventually he found an available dress at a shop in Costa Mesa.

Both women tried it on. Both loved it. Jim bought two pairs of white shoes with heels of different heights so, depending on how it fit, the skirt would be the right length on Patty.

When he wasn’t sewing or shopping, Jim recorded some 60 love songs to play during the reception. Patty asked about that, too, and he told her he was taping a few songs for his funeral service. She didn’t ask anymore.

Patty didn’t think it the least bit crazy when Jim suggested they return to the Precious Moments Chapel for another visit. This time, they would give Butcher a special rug that was custom-made by Patty’s company with the likeness of one of his figurines.

“Why not invite some of our friends to come?” Jim asked Patty. Maybe they’d like to meet Butcher, too. About 20 close friends and family members accepted the invitations, with Jim secretly including his own announcement about the surprise wedding.

With all of his plans in place, Jim loaded the motor home with everything needed for the wedding hidden in boxes marked “antifreeze” and “snow chains” so Patty wouldn’t peek inside. He even packed the sewing machine in case her dress needed last-minute alterations.

The group arrived in Carthage, then made the short trip to Branson to attend a comedy show a couple of nights later. Jim proposed to Patty during intermission, on his knees in front of the audience.

“My first reaction was, What did he get us into this time?” she says.

When she discovered the full scope of his plans, Patty was amazed.

“He thought of everything.”

Jim had even arranged an appointment with a hairstylist and manicurist for Patty. One of the guests who attended was a skilled seamstress who altered her gown to fit perfectly. Patty loved the dress:

“I couldn’t have done a better job picking it,” she says.

On a table at the chapel, Jim displayed poems he’d written for Patty, his daughters and other loved ones. They were about “life, and the things you think about when they give you six months to live,” he says.

It was indeed a fairy-tale wedding.

On their 24th anniversary, Patty and Jim repeated their vows to stay together forever.