The coronavirus pandemic disrupted so many lives during 2020, forcing many people to cancel special or important plans and rearrange their lives in big ways. Nikita Horton and fiancé Andre Archer were two of those people. The Atlanta couple had originally set their wedding date for 2020, but due to all the shutdowns as well as personal health issues, their wedding had to be postponed.

Horton saw firsthand the tragic effects of the pandemic. As an ICU caseworker, she was surrounded by death and heartache. Speaking to FOX 5 ATLANTA, she shares how difficult 2020 has been for her:

“Seeing deaths is a regular thing for me, people are here one day, gone the next. Not having the opportunity to be with their families and also dealing with my own personal health issues was kind of like ‘Woo, that’s kind of scary.'”

What Horton and Archer couldn’t anticipate was how local businesses from the Atlanta area would band together and help them redeem the disrupted and lost moments of 2020. Courtney Laramore is the owner of Miss Milly’s, a special events rental and design company. Last year her son Brock spent time in a hospital NICU.

On the day Brock was to be discharged, a nurse was listening to his heart and detected a very faint murmur. No one else had caught it up to this point, and it turns out that the nurse saved Brock’s little life by discovering what turned out to be a congenital heart defect.

“We don’t know who that nurse was, we want to pay it forward,” Laramore said.

Laramore came up with an idea which she pitched to other wedding vendors in the Atlanta area. She wanted to bless a frontline worker who had to put their wedding plans on hold by offering them a completely paid for wedding, donated by wedding vendors from the area. Her idea was enthusiastically embraced by her fellow venders, and she decided to promote a “wedding giveaway,’ where one lucky couple would have all aspects of their special day covered.

“Every single one of these vendors has struggled in the past year to keep their doors open, but no one hesitated to jump on this opportunity to help someone out,” Laramore said.

From the wedding dress to the catering, and everything in between, two-dozen metro area vendors were donating their services to provide a $75,000 dream wedding on January 17, 2021. The contest was held in July 2020, with submissions pouring in immediately from frontline workers and friends who made submissions on their behalf.

The submissions were then voted on by the public, with Nikita and Andre being the lucky couple chosen over all the other submissions, and they immediately began making plans for their upcoming nuptials. Here is their story which was submitted by Horton:

“We can’t say thank you enough. We are really grateful and honored that you all gave this chance and chose us,” Archer said.

The brand-new Mrs. Archer added:

“This was meant to be, it was written in the stars, it was destiny.”