A blind bride brought the entire congregation into her world on her wedding day by inviting them to wear blindfolds. Her groom “saw” his bride for the first time by touching her exquisite dress with his hands, and the moment moved the room to tears.
“I would say walking down the aisle was one of the happiest moments of my life, but I was really, really worried because it’s such a visual thing in our society,” Ms. Edwards told The Epoch Times. “I don’t want everyone to smile at me, and my loved ones, the people who I love most in the world, to look at me and me not be able to look back ... my heart ached, thinking about that.”
As she was thinking about how to transform the moment into something positive that she could “truly experience with everybody,” her husband-to-be told her: “Well, if you can’t see that moment, I don’t want to see it; I want to live this moment with you and everyone blindfolded.”
Seeing the World in a ‘Truly Beautiful Way’
Ms. Edwards lost vision in her right eye at 11, and in her left eye at 17, just two months into her relationship with Mr. Cave whom she met at a theater group. She tried to end their relationship to spare her new boyfriend from the hard road ahead.“I was in despair, really, about what I would do with my life, and he turned to me and he said, ‘Lucy, I’m not going to leave you. ... I know that you won’t be sad about your blindness forever, and we can get through this,’” Ms. Edwards said. “I think, truly, that’s when I knew that he was forever.”
Mr. Cave proposed on the beach at Tenerife in the summer of 2018, surprising his bride, who was almost completely blind but could still “see a little bit of sparkle.” When it came to shopping for her wedding dress, Ms. Edwards knew it had to be tactile. She found the perfect gown from the Scottish brand Eleganza, who gifted her the dress because they saw the priceless expression on her face when she first put it on.
“He actually fell to his knees because he was just so overwhelmed with the emotion of it all and just how pretty it was, and how pretty I felt in it,” Ms. Edwards said. “After the ceremony was over, he was like, ‘I didn’t feel like I needed to see it, Lucy; I didn’t feel like I needed to take my blindfold off, because it was so pretty.’”
The bride had made the room a multi-sensory experience for everyone with flowers, which increased in scent intensity from the door to the altar, and surround sound so the music of the live harp player, as well as Mr. Cave’s curated soundtrack, would resonate from different parts of the room.
“Everyone was crying,” Ms. Edwards said. “Everyone at the end was just saying, ‘We felt like we were living a moment in your shoes.’
“Blindness is a gift. I lost my eyesight, but I gained the [ability] to be able to see the world in a truly beautiful way.”
’Blind Not Broken’
The first sign of Ms. Edwards’s condition manifested at age 4 when she developed lumps “almost like chicken pox” on the backs of her legs. Doctors diagnosed IP, but Ms. Edwards had no idea it would eventually affect her eyes.Navigating the world as a blind person was “really, really scary” at first since Ms. Edwards lacked examples of other people thriving without sight. She developed a slogan, “Blind not broken,” and determined to set that example for herself. She resisted mobility aids for as long as possible, eventually using a white cane to help her navigate school corridors. Her supportive parents hired a mobility instructor to help their daughter learn how to be independent.
Ms. Edwards achieved her A-levels by dictating all of her exams and got into law school before suffering a breakdown.
“I kind of pushed all of my emotions down to try and get to that point,” she said. But she pulled through and got her first job as a journalist with the BBC.
Later, she and Mr. Cave moved from London to Birmingham, England, where Ms. Edwards has two guide dogs and owns her own business.
Self-Acceptance
While her husband is not blind, Ms. Edwards truly believes they “went blind together.”“We learned Braille, my tactile language, together,” she said. “When I’ve been really scared to go out, he’s gone for hours and hours and helped me learn routes to the shop, so I can buy bread and feel independent. He blindfolded himself recently, with my guide dog instructor, and he’s learned how to use a guide dog. He’s just the most supportive man, and I just love him.”
“If you have a disability, or you have acquired a disability later in life ... I hope that my story inspires you, and you’re able to feel one day that you can have wings again and understand who you are again,” she told The Epoch Times.
“My journey with self-acceptance and love toward myself has been a long one, and it has been challenging at times. But I’ve worked every single day on truly loving the person that I am now, and not hoping for another tomorrow.”
