On the Front Page of The Ottawa Citizen Today appeared this story. The Rev. Brian Cornelius, the minister at First United  presided over the service.

Ricky Brooks, severely disabled and in a wheelchair, and Nadia Cashman, also severely disabled and in a wheelchair, came together at the Montgomery Legion on Kent Street to get married Saturday September 5, 2009.
Photograph by: Ashley Fraser, The Ottawa Citizen
OTTAWA — A morgue, generally speaking, is not the ideal place to pledge undying love to the woman of your dreams.

Convention dictates chic restaurants or scenic natural settings as being more likely to soften up the object of affection in order to elicit that heart-stopping “yes.”

But there is nothing conventional in the courtship and union of Ricky Brooks and Nadia Cashman, who sealed their marriage with a passionate kiss at the Montgomery Legion in downtown Ottawa on Saturday afternoon.

Brooks has cerebral palsy and Cashman spina bifida. Both use wheelchairs and live in long-term care facilities in two Ottawa hospitals.

But as Cashman wheeled herself into the hall escorted by her father, Gerald, Brooks lit up, making any difficulties posed by their conditions seem completely and utterly irrelevant.

About 150 people attended the wedding — friends and family who spontaneously rose to their feet throughout the service to applaud the couple during a ceremony that had moments of high comedy and touching drama.

As the two mothers, Carmen Brooks and Hélène Cashman, lit symbolic candles, Brooks backed up his electric wheelchair to watch. The chair beeped like a reversing truck, eliciting roars of laughter from the guests.

Brooks pointed back to the audience, grinning cheekily.

But as the two recited the vows they wrote, even jaded members of the media were hard-pressed to blink back tears as the couple gazed into each other’s eyes.

Brooks, who has trouble speaking at the best of times, struggled mightily to utter his vows as the words fought with the obvious joy welling up within him.

“Today you fill my heart even more,” he said to Cashman.

“My little star, you came from above,” Cashman told him in a quiet but clear voice, her face etched with emotion.

Rev. Brian Cornelius, a United Church minister, presided over the service.

He recounted the story of how the newlyweds met.

Cashman had gone for treatment at St. Vincent’s Hospital, where Brooks lives.

Not in the greatest state of mind at the time, her eyes meet Brooks’ and “the dumps began to disappear,” Cornelius said.

Brooks was hooked too.

“Go get her,” a nurse told him.

He did, finagling tablecloths and fine dinnerware to wine and dine his new love who was, obviously, powerless to resist him.

What drew him to her?

“Everything,” he said.

Cornelius noted the difficulty of wooing someone in a public space, where nurses, doctors and other patients made it difficult for the two to share much privacy.

But the hallway near the hospital morgue saw little traffic, and it was there that Brooks popped the question.

What could a girl say but yes?

Brooks, unable to contain himself at this point in Cornelius’ narrative, shouted triumphantly as his father Richard clapped him on the shoulder.

Cornelius opened up the floor to “nuggets of wisdom” for the married couple.

Despite protestations, Richard eventually took the microphone.

“I know the phone’s not going to ring as much,” he said with the smallest tinge of sadness.

“I still got your back though, OK?”

Advice from an uncle, Sheldon Brooks, was concise.

“Don’t disrespect her and never neglect her,” he said.

As the couple signed the wedding registry they were mobbed by family, disappearing under well-wishers jostling to pay their respects.

Brooks gave as good as he got.

“He almost punched me in the head he was so excited,” said Greg Carvery, another uncle who had driven up from Halifax for the occasion.

“It was worth the 14-hour drive,” he said. “One of the best weddings I’ve ever seen.”

It took Cornelius a few minutes to restore order before he could officially pronounce the couple husband and wife.

When he finally said the magic words, Brooks’ exultant voice boomed over the guests’ cheers.

“Yeah!”

Hélène Cashman said the couple would be spending the night together in a room in Nadia’s Montfort Hospital facility. She said the room was to be festooned with rose petals.

Brooks will have to return to St. Vincent’s the next day, but he is first on the waiting list to join his wife at the Montfort where they can begin years of wedded bliss.

“He’s probably the happiest man in Ottawa tonight,” his father said.

“And I’m the second happiest.

It gives me hope that one day I will meet that special someone.