Couple who won dream wedding after devastating diagnosis to be married Friday

After having to postpone their wedding twice Jessica Bondy and Shawn Byrne will be getting married this week in Windsor, Ont. on Thursday, Nov. 4, 2021. (Angelo Aversa/CTV Windsor)

Windsor, Ont. -

After postponing their wedding day multiple times for health reasons, a soon-to-be newlywed couple will finally tie the knot this week.

They say it was worth the wait.

“Actually it’s 4:30 right now, in 48 hours we will be married,” said Jessica Bondy.

For these two, the third time is the charm.

“I really didn’t think we’d ever get anything close to this kind of a wedding,” Bondy said.

Bondy and her fiancé Shawn Byrne got engaged in 2016.

“So she planned a surprise 40th birthday for me and I found out so I surprised her with an engagement ring that day,” Byrne said.

However, their wedding plans took and expected turn when Byrne was diagnosed with end-stage renal failure disease, requiring dialysis treatment and a new kidney.

But there was a glimmer of hope during the rough times.

The couples entered Ambassador Golf Club’s ‘Pay it Forward’ contest last year and won an all-expense paid wedding of their dreams.

“There’s the gelato cart, my dress from It’s Your Day was donated, some of our flowers, our DJ, limo,” Bondy tells CTV News. “There’s so many different vendors, our decorator the photographer. Everything is donated.”

The wedding was first scheduled for Feb. 14, and then pushed to April 16.

“I was supposed to be on a six-day tour and I was there for 30 full days because of different complications I went through,” Byrne said.

The couple will tie the knot on Friday.

“There’s still so many good people out there that do something so selflessly for strangers,” Bondy said. “I mean we were complete strangers from Diane.”

Seeing the generosity from the community, Byrne and Bondy are also “paying it forward.”

“From the money that we raised we donated $500 to the kidney foundation,” Bondy said.