Hurricane Irene Fails To Dampen a Wedding Ceremony

Some brides-to-be pick a wedding date because of its popularity or personal signficance. And some pick a date because it's their lucky number. Take Mary Grace Badillo, for example. For her August wedding, she liked the number 28.

“I thought it was a lucky number,” said Badillo who planned her wedding ceremony at the St. Mark’s Roman Catholic Church in Rahway a mere three months ago; well before the heat wave in July, the earthquake in August and a beast of a hurricane named Irene which made quite a mess of her wedding. Some storms are just so rude.

“In the Philippines, we have typhoons. We never thought it was going to be that bad,” said the former Ms. Mary Grace Arabaca who, with her husband, Henry Patrick Badillo, is originally from the Philippines. “They [my friends from Rahway] said it’s never been flooded before in that part of Rahway [where the church is located].”

The national weather reports seemed somewhat askew to Mary Grace and Henry who thought the sky didn't look all that ominous on Saturday, August 27. What's the big deal about rain when you've lived through typhoons, right?

Nevertheless,  Mary Grace, a resident of Old Bridge and Henry Patrick, a Wayne township resident, decided to cancel their wedding reception as calls came in that Saturday from some of the 70 invited guests. Only 20 brave souls ventured out onto the flooding roads to attend the grand event.

Determined to be wed, the couple decided stay in a nearby hotel in Clark the night before the big day, just in case that pesky Irene decided to rain on their ceremony. Joining the couple at the hotel were the bride’s brother and her mother, who put to rest any thought about postponing the nuptials.

“Even if it was not the full Catholic mass that would be okay,” Badillo said.  “It’s bad luck to postpone a wedding in the Philippines. I don’t know if it’s true but it’s what the older people say, that bad things would happen.”

Besides, she said, her mother said that the weather reports were likely “exaggerated.”

So off they went to meet Father Robert Lamirez at St. Mark's Church at 2:00 p.m.

Then came the rains.

"Our original plan was to get married at St. Mark’s Church but it was flooded and we couldn’t get in there,” said Badillo. “Father Lamirez offered to move us to the chapel [at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital at Rahway where Lamirez presides as a chapel priest].

Why didn’t the future Mr. and Mrs. Badillo simply call it quits after St. Mark’s and an affiliate church, St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church, had both flooded? It's bad luck to postpone a wedding if you are from the Philippines. Besides, Badillo said, “everything was already planned” and her relatives came all the way from her native country to see Mary Grace Arabaca become Mrs. Mary Grace Arabaca Badillo.

“We asked Father Robert if we could push through it,” Badillo said. “He was supportive in whatever we chose to do. We decided to push through it.”

Lamirez, who is a hospital priest at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital at Rahway suggested the wedding party relocate to the small but dry chapel located in the hospital. It was later that day when the ceremony finally took place. Mary Grace looked stunning in her wedding gown, which she said met not so much as a drop of rain. Patrick Henry’s tuxedo stayed just as dry.

"It’s a good thing he didn’t rent it, though,” Badillo said. "It was just luck he didn't get soaked."