You can plan for the worst-case scenario on your wedding day, but a bank robbery?
"I'm crying hysterically, I'm supposed to get married in five minutes," bride-to-be Katie Bernhard told The Morning Call after the "I do's" had been done and she'd had a chance to calm down.
It was not your ordinary morning and Katie and her high school sweetheart, Jay Albert, are not your ordinary couple.
"Anyone who knows us, knows we do not live a normal life in any direction and go figure, we picked a random day to do this and so on a random freakin' day, this happens!"
Katie was headed to the civil ceremony in downtown Emmaus, Pa. that morning with her mom, when the two hit a roadblock just a few blocks away from their destination. Police were trying to catch some "armed and dangerous" bank robbers.
"And the officer was just screaming at my mom, 'You need to move!' "Katie said. "I just lost it."
Katie and her mom waited it out inside their car in the library parking lot while Jay Albert and their 25 guests, were waiting inside the courthouse.
"It was a crazy day!"
More than an hour later, police let Katie and her mom make their way through the town cemetery to get to the ceremony.
When she walked into the courtroom, there was Jay Albert, with the second shocker of the morning -- he had shaved off his trademark beard; the beard that was long enough for Katie to braid on occasion.
"Oh my God! The first thing I did was I touched his face and I balled. I think I balled more seeing his face than I actually did getting married. I have not seen my husband's face in seven years!"
Three other couples who were all getting married by the same Judge, faced the same pre-wedding/robbery roadblock predicament that day.
"A shotgun wedding," Katie's new mother-in-law joked when the ceremony was over. Then they all headed to the sushi buffet at the local Chinese restaurant to celebrate. And when the fortune cookies got passed around, Katie got a kick out of hers.
"It was something like, 'Wealth and great fortune in your new future!"
