And all the experts were predicting this love affair couldn’t last — that the bride saying she was kidnapped and it turning out that she simply had cold feet would mean this couple’s marriage was doomed.
NO! Love conquers all. Because the jilted Georgia groom now says he not only still loves her but he wants to marry her:””Haven’t we all made mistakes?” he asks.
Here’s a bit more from the AP’s Love Conquers All story involving John Mason and Jennifer Wilbanks:
“Just because we haven’t walked down the aisle, just because we haven’t stood in front of 500 people and said our I Do’s, my commitment before God to her was the day I bought that ring and put it on her finger, and I’m not backing down from that,” John Mason said Monday in an interview with Fox News’ Hannity & Colmes show.
It was Mason’s first public statement since he learned on the morning of his scheduled wedding day that his fiancee had gotten cold feet.
As her family and friends feared the worst, police say Wilbanks cut her hair and took a Greyhound bus to Las Vegas to back out of a lavish, 600-guest wedding planned for Saturday. She then went on to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where she eventually called Mason and police from a pay phone at a convenience store, saying she had been kidnapped. She later said it was simply a case of cold feet.
Mason said he has given the 32-year-old Wilbanks her ring back _ she had left it at the house _ and said they still planned to marry.
Of course, various authorities may not be so forgiving. Some are looking into possible legal action against her. They’re not happy with her false claim that she was kidnapped and a prosecutor even alleges that there’s some evidence her cold feet were frozen ahead of time — that the dramatic disappearance was planned in advance.
But what does that matter when there’s a solid base of love?
If they do marry, hopefully she’ll show up for their honeymoon and he won’t get a phone call from her at night saying: “Honey, start without me…”
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.