On October 10, 2012, I received an email titled, “Hope for Goodwill”. In my daily routine, I usually batch delete emails from my iPhone as they come in throughout the day. I typically skim through the preview of the emails I suspect are spam before deleting them – on this day, this is what I saw:
I’ll be honest, it sounded like the American Red Cross or Rock the Vote emails I get on a weekly basis. On my phone, I actually swiped to delete, but suddenly decided not to – that I’d read it when I got home. Little did I know that this email would lead me to two loving and caring families faced with devastating news.
Basically, Belle emailed me on behalf of her sister, Vinna and her fiancé, Johnathan. Johnathan was diagnosed with ALS early this year and Belle wanted to surprise them with a wedding in two months (December 8th).
After having a meet and greet over FaceTime, my heart felt heavy for them and I started to get to work on figuring out how to help. I decided to donate photography and videography coverage for their wedding. So I contacted my long time friend and cinematographer, Enoch, to film the wedding and we started brainstorming ideas to capture this touching, yet difficult situation.
We decided to ask Vinna and Johnathan if we could tell their love story and create some content to share. This is part one of what we came up with:
I won’t lie – this blog post and this video were created to shine a light not only on this couple’s amazing determination and relationship, but also ALS. They’ve set up a gofundme page to help with Johnathan’s health costs. If you feel compelled to donate, please use this link and help them fight this disease.
