For Eric Nunez and Samantha, a wooden platform and wheelchair ramp helped turn the grounds of Sharp Grossmont Hospital into a place where they could marry. The hospital’s engineering crew built the platform, according to FOX 5 San Diego; the report does not say whether it was an altar.
The ceremony took place on November 6, the date the couple had chosen before Nunez’s medical emergency. FOX 5 reported that he went to the hospital on October 26 with numbness and severe back pain and underwent emergency surgery to relieve pressure on spinal nerves. He was transferred on November 3 for rehabilitation and continued treatment.
A ceremony shaped around access
With the date approaching, Nunez asked staff about a small ceremony in his room. Instead, his care team arranged an outdoor event in less than 36 hours, the report says. In addition to the ramped platform, volunteers brought flowers, and fellow patients made bouquets during therapy. More than 40 people attended. The hospital director played violin, accompanied by a guitarist who was married to a Sharp nurse, according to FOX 5.
Sharp HealthCare says it provides inpatient and outpatient rehabilitation at several acute-care hospitals, including Sharp Grossmont. That establishes rehabilitation as part of the system’s services, but does not explain the specifics of Nunez’s care or what accessibility standards applied to the temporary wedding platform.
Other hospitals have made room for weddings
The Sharp ceremony is one example of a hospital adapting its setting for a patient’s important family occasion. In Philadelphia, Penn Medicine reported that a patient receiving leukemia treatment married her partner at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania Pavilion on August 5, 2024. Four days later, the hospital held a separate ceremony in its cardiac intensive care unit so patient Keith Maggs could attend his son’s wedding.
Those Philadelphia events and Nunez and Samantha’s outdoor ceremony involved different patients, settings and circumstances. They are individual examples, not evidence that hospital weddings are becoming more common or that Sharp operates a formal wedding program.
Nunez included “in sickness and in health” in his vows. He and Samantha thanked the people who helped make the day possible, FOX 5 reported.
