Nebraska Bride Temporarily Blinded by Bouquet of Poisonous Flowers Gets Dream Wedding Do-Over
One Nebraska bride took her wedding day mishap in stride — and was rewarded six months later with the ultimate fairy tale dream wedding do-over.
Before her wedding on September 2, 2017, Christine Jo Miller was picking wildflowers outside her ceremony site in Lincoln, Nebraska. She had already arranged for professional flowers, but she wanted to include hand-picked flowers in her bouquet and the wedding trellis to add a traditional touch.
What Christine, 23, didn’t know was that the flowers — green-and-white snow-on-the-mountains — were poisonous.
After she went upstairs to wash her face before the ceremony, she immediately broke out into a rash and her eyes started watering.
“Within 15 minutes there was a rash on my face and it started to spread down my neck and arms,” Christine tells PEOPLE. “An hour later, my eyes started burning.”
Thinking it was just an allergic reaction, Christine says her aunt who is a nurse gave her steroids and Benadryl, but she didn’t feel any relief.
“They were burning pretty bad,” she says. “I kept my eyes shut while I got my hair done and even tried to calm them with cucumbers, but when I opened my eyes everything was super blurry and I couldn’t see.”
“I did my makeup myself and it kept dripping off because my eyes were watering so bad,” she adds. “I had black lines running down my face the whole time, but I didn’t care at that point because I was in so much pain.”
Christine managed to stay calm as her mother took her to a nearby urgent care, but when they discovered it was closed, her mother asked her if she wanted to cancel the ceremony.
“I said no,” Christine says. “There was no reason to freak out because it was out of my control. There were 300 people there wanting to have fun and it didn’t make it any better to soak in my own sorrows, so I tried to keep calm.”
So she went back and put on her dress and took off for the ceremony. When she reached the end of the aisle, she whispered to her fiancé, Jon, 24, that as soon as the ceremony ended, they had to go straight to the hospital.
After they said their “I dos,” the newlyweds hopped in Jon’s truck and took off for the hospital, where doctors gave Christine a shot and some eye drops. They told her she was lucky she didn’t have permanent eye damage from the poisonous plants.
Groggy from the meds and still in pain, they stopped off at a Target on their way back to the reception and Jon ran in to buy his new bride a comfy pair of pajamas to change into so she’d be more comfortable at the reception.
“He got me pajamas that said ‘Bride’ on it,” she says. “He asked if he should change to and I said no. He made me as comfortable as possible.”
After their blurry-eyed first dance and some cake-cutting, the lovebirds retired to their hotel, where Christine immediately passed out and Jon ordered a pizza and ate it in bed — not quite the romantic evening they had planned.
Enter Steve Harvey.
After hearing their story, the talk show host invited them onto his show, where they were surprised with a week-long Disney Dream Wedding re-do (airing all next week) — with Harvey as the officiant.
“I had just never heard of a wedding where the bride had to be rushed to the emergency room for having an allergic reaction to her bouquet and having so many bad things happen on their wedding day,” Harvey tells PEOPLE. “I really felt like they deserved another opportunity to celebrate and what better place to make it happen than Disney.”
On Sunday, the couple was treated to the ultimate fairy tale ceremony — complete with a new wedding dress for Christine from Demetrios Bridal in New York. She arrived in a horse-drawn carriage and walked down the aisle with clear eyes to say “I do” to her husband all over again.
“I ended up crying during the ceremony, and I don’t usually cry,” she says.
“Steve did absolutely amazing,” she says of the ceremony. “Then my entire family went to the Magic Kingdom and hung out all day.”
“Jon loved it too,” she says. “The day was so much fun.”
As for married life, the happy bride says: “It’s been amazing. We’ve loved every second of it.”
And as they plan to set off on their surprise honeymoon to Disney’s Aulani Resort in Hawaii, the couple has even more exciting news to share: They are expecting their first baby in September.
Tune into “STEVE” all next week to follow Christine Jo and Jon’s story. The couple will be featured on every show next week beginning Monday, March 19 and culminating in their on stage wedding officiated by Steve Harvey on Friday, March 23.
