Bride who uses a wheelchair surprises the groom by walking down the aisle at their wedding

Editor's Note: This article was originally published on March 29, 2022. It has since been updated.

Chelsie Hill always knew she wanted to walk down the aisle at her wedding. So when the time came to tie the knot with her beau, Jay Bloomfield, on September 24, 2021, Hill—who has been paralyzed from the waist down since a 2010 accident—ditched her wheelchair before heading to the altar. The 29-year-old took her now-husband completely by surprise when she and her father made their entrance hand in hand. "As soon as I saw Jay, his jaw dropped," Hill told Insider. "He was just in shock that I was walking because he had no idea."

The beautiful moment was appreciated by many on social media after the couple's wedding photographer, Asha Bailey, shared a video capturing Bloomfield's heartwarming reaction to his bride walking down the aisle toward him. "She said she dreamed of the day she'd look into her husband's eyes on her wedding day... and she did that. There wasn't a dry eye in the crowd. These moments — these moments are the reason I do what I do," Bailey wrote on Instagram. The video has since been shared across social media platforms with netizens shedding virtual tears over the bride's special surprise for her groom.

Hill, who is the CEO and founder of the Rollettes—a wheelchair dance team in Los Angeles—has been with Bloomfield, 34, since 2014. Ahead of their wedding at the Hyatt Regency Huntington Beach, she had arranged it so that the groom would have his back turned to the aisle before she entered the ceremony. "My whole life I had imagined standing eye to eye with my husband on my wedding day. After my accident, I wasn't sure if I would ever find someone who truly loved all of me. You have accepted me fully, honored me, and adored all the parts of me. For this moment today, I wanted to do something I had always dreamed of. Stand eye to eye with you as we promise our lives to each other," Hill told Bloomfield in her vows.

Speaking to reporters, Hill shared that walking down the aisle was one of her favorite moments of the day. "I just felt like that whole time our souls were locked in on each other," she said. "I didn't see anybody else around me. I just saw him." Hill revealed that she used leg braces and a walker to make her longtime dream of walking down the aisle on her wedding day a reality. "I want to stress that there's nothing wrong with sitting down in your chair," she explained. "But for me growing up, I always imagined myself walking down the aisle."

"And I just wanted to feel that — not that my disability has taken anything away from me — but I just wanted to feel that heart to heart and stand up there eye to eye with him," Hill added. "That was just really something really important to me personally." Their wedding day was peppered with a few more surprises by Hill. She and her dad wowed the crowd with an epic father-daughter dance choreographed by Phil Wright which began with a traditional slow dance filled with twirls and hugs but soon took an exciting turn when Soulja Boy's 2007 hit "Crank That" started blasting.

Reflecting on their special day, Hill shared on Instagram that she couldn't have been happier with how everything turned out. "Such a magical weekend," she wrote. "To say it was a dream is an understatement. To our friends and family that attended- thank you for coming in from all over. Each of you made it so special and mean so much to Jay and I."

Cover image: Instagram/Asha Bailey