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Marriage begins in the midst of grief

The wedding goes on, mostly as planned, for the bride who lost her mother and two cousins in a grisly accident early Friday.

By S.I. ROSENBAUM
Published April 23, 2006

TAMPA - The wedding party spilled out of the church, wearing the colors of spring: peach, pink, aqua.

Tomorrow will be soon enough for luksa, the black clothes of mourning. Today was for celebration, even in the face of grief.

On Friday, the bride, Cathy Manzano of Tampa, lost her mother and two cousins in an early morning crash. Two more family members remain in critical condition at Tampa General Hospital. Emily Manzano, 62, was driving a car full of visiting relatives, in town for the wedding, back to her home in Brandon at 3 a.m.

At the intersection of Parsons Avenue and Lumsden Road, a Dodge Durango driven by a Lakeland man collided with her Mercedes. That driver, Kenneth Stewart, 34, has not been charged in the crash; the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office is investigating.

Friday morning, as they gathered in the hospital, Cathy Manzano and her family made the decision to carry on with the wedding, as Emily would have wanted.

"We need to face the facts," said Wilfredo Manzano, Emily's husband and Cathy's father. "Life has to go forward."

That night, at the rehearsal, organizer Jose Omila called the names of the relatives in the wedding party. But the first name he called was met with silence.

Then the bride came to tell him that he'd called the name of one of the dead.

It went like that, throughout the evening, Omila said, as the family went through the traditional wedding eve rituals in the midst of sorrow.

But he said the Manzanos wanted to separate Cathy's wedding from the mourning of the dead.

Wilfredo rejected the idea of having an empty chair at the ceremony, Omila said.

"After the happy day, then we will talk about it," Omila remembered him saying.

Some wedding plans changed. Omila instructed the musicians at the reception not to play any dance music; there would be no dancing. And he canceled the couple's honeymoon to Costa Rica, in accordance with the Philippine tradition, of luksa, or mourning. No traveling, no celebrating. Traditionally, black is worn all year, he said.

First, though, the wedding.

The guests tried to hold back their tears, he said, but some broke down when a young man sang Ave Maria.

And Cathy Manzano began to weep as she said her vows to her new husband, Cory Jones.

"She just looked at Cory and tried to say the words, with shivering lips and tears falling from her eyes," Omila said.

S.I. Rosenbaum can be reached at 813 661-2442 or srosenbaum@sptimes.com

[Last modified April 23, 2006, 00:49:08]