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Bride Walks Down Aisle At UCSF So Dying Father Can Give Her Away

SAN FRANCISCO (KPIX) -- A Bay Area couple had a last minute change in venue and ended exchanging vows in a hospital, but they wouldn't have changed a thing.

Vieneese Stanton always knew when she got married, her father, Preston Rolan would walk her down the aisle. It was something she always dreamed about.

"We knew we wanted to do that for sure," she said.

In February, Preston was diagnosed with leukemia. And by October, the doctors told Stanton he wasn't going to get better. The wedding she and her fiancée had planned for next Spring would come too late. They did not think he would make it that far, at all.

Stanton had six weeks to come up with a backup plan.

Her father's nurses got word of this and literally made it an official wedding at the hospital.

The team of nurses at UCSF pulled out all the stops, transforming a hospital ward into a chapel.

"You can see the little cake they had bought us and they even had party favors for us," said Stanton. "This was beyond more than I had asked for."

When her unsuspecting father took his daily walk through the hospital November 16, Stanton met him in the hall wearing her wedding gown.

In some of the pictures his eyes are super huge because he's so shocked.

"I'm just happy for my daughter," he said.

After the ceremony Rolan even serenaded his daughter, singing Stevie Wonder's 'Isn't She Lovely."

Since the wedding, Stanton's story has gone viral on Facebook, something she had to explain to Rolan.

"All of his nurses now, they tell him he's famous," she says.

Vieneese says Rolan will go into hospice soon. She is still processing that his time is now limited to just a few weeks.

"I am really getting ready for my dad to possibly pass away very, very soon and that plus people spending so many love and prayers our way," says Stanton. "This is so bittersweet."

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