This Bride Had Her Fiancé Edited Into Wedding Photos After His Tragic Death

A wedding tends to be thought of as the happiest day of someone’s life. For many, a wedding is something that’s been planned since childhood, from the food they want to serve to what they want to wear. And then as they get older, the person they want to marry becomes the most important and real part of the celebration.

For Debbie Gerlach, marrying her best friend was all she was looking forward to. The bride from Arizona had been gearing up for her wedding on November 11 with Randy Zimmerman, her husband-to-be. But nine months before their big day, Zimmerman got into a tragic motorcycle accident that cost him his life.

Even through all of the mourning and grieving, Gerlach still wanted to take wedding photos. She wasn’t going to be in them alone — Gerlach wanted her photographer, Kristie Fonseca, to edit images of Zimmerman into each picture, something Fonseca had previous experience in.

[image_with_caption text=”Kristie Fonseca/Debbie Gerlach/Facebook” image=”https://itsblossom.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/45949445_10212819678382439_6054037754134659072_n.jpg”]

In her wedding gown, wearing a locket with Zimmerman in it, Gerlach posed in a desert in Tucson to honor and remember her late fiancé.

“Her smile had a warmth as if he was talking to her,” Fonseca told Yahoo Lifestyle. “Even though he wasn’t there, she moved as if he was.”

[image_with_caption text=”Kristie Fonseca/Debbie Gerlach/Facebook” image=”https://itsblossom.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/45838383_10212819681582519_7609625160139669504_o.jpg”]

The bride waited to publicly share her photos until her set wedding date. The images went viral on Facebook with over 160,000 shares. She wrote a heartbreaking post to accompany the photos about how the love of her life was taken from her because of a careless driver.

[fm_facebook url=”https://www.facebook.com/debbie.gerlach.79/posts/10212819717103407″]

“Today I will not have a husband… and that is because a person made a choice that has forever changed my life, a choice to NOT stop at a stop sign, to NOT stop when he saw my fiancé coming toward him on his motorcycle, but instead tried to hurry across the street,” Gerlach’s post explained.

Having to go through a heart-wrenching event and still try to encourage others to drive safely is something Gerlach set out to do. And now, with her beautiful wedding photos, she can celebrate her fiancé’s life and commemorate the time they had together — forever.