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One woman's wedding bliss
Vendors rally to make bride's dream a reality
Bride WEB
Amanda Jude talks Wednesday about her upcoming wedding at Lily McGregor Photography Studio, one of the vendors donating resources to the event. - photo by Autumn Vetter
Amanda Jude has two big hopes for her wedding day.One is to not trip going down the aisle.The other is that all the people who donated to make her dream day a reality will be able to see it come together.Jude will say “I do” to her U.S. Army fiancé on Aug. 12, when he returns home for four days to get married.They’ll exchange vows in front of family, friends and folks they’d never met until after Jude settled on a courthouse wedding.Local wedding vendors have since rallied together to provide a wedding ceremony and reception for the 21-year-old Army bride and her military man, Brian Chambers, 22.Jude, who works at a local Starbucks, mentioned to a co-worker that she wouldn’t be able to afford the wedding she’d been planning.That friend told her mother, Natalie Roth, a Forsyth County cake designer, who offered to provide the wedding dessert centerpiece for free.But Roth didn’t stop there.She told Jude she would make a few calls, and within hours the courthouse ceremony was history.Jude was floored with the news. Within a couple weeks, every vendor needed for an American wedding was on board.“An entire community [is] pulling together behind one couple that nobody even met,” she said. “Everybody [who’s donating] was like ‘Wow, he risked his life for his country, and he can’t even afford a wedding.’”Roth had that reaction when she hit the phones to rally donations, and the other vendors jumped on board right away.“I think everybody is trying to do something to support the troops,” she said.