Couple ties the knot in heartwarming backyard ceremony a week after receiving world-shattering news

Editor's note: This article was originally published on July 5, 2023. It has since been updated.

Weddings hold great significance in the lives of couples, often demanding months or even years of meticulous planning to ensure a flawlessly memorable occasion. However, what will you do if you don't have much time on your hands to plan a lavish wedding ceremony? This couple demonstrated that wedding preparations can be taken care of faster than you might think. Ashley Reese and Robert Stengel got married in the backyard of their apartment with the help of their friends and family.

However, the urgency of their wedding is a result of life-changing news that shocked the couple a week before their big day. Stengel was suffering from cancer and his condition was getting worse day by day. So, Reese decided to just get married as quickly as possible to the love of her life because she did not want to waste a single moment they had left together. According to the GoFundMe page set up for Stengel's treatment, Reese was laid off from her job after which she turned to become a full-time caregiver for her husband.

According to Your Tango, the couple dated for a few years after meeting each other on a dating app in 2014 and then eventually moved together to an apartment located in Bed Stuy, Brooklyn. However, things took a turn for the worse in 2019 when Stengel was diagnosed with a type of cancer called peritoneal mesothelioma.

The disease returned in the spring of 2022 despite Stengel initially being declared cancer-free after surgery and multiple rounds of chemotherapy. "The treatment wasn’t working as well as any of us hoped, and the side effects led to chronic pain and massive weight loss," Reese said in a 2022 interview with Vogue. "Rob decided to stop treatment and try to be as comfortable as possible at home for the weeks or months he has left."

"After a lot of crying, I figured, hey, let’s finally get married, ASAP. And by ASAP, I meant in one week," Reese said in the interview and that's what she ended up doing. "My boyfriend’s cancer was progressing, so we said screw it, let’s get married at our Brooklyn apartment ASAP." Luckily their friends were able to coordinate the wedding perfectly and arrange for everything necessary from caterers to hiring a local DJ.

Stengel's friends from his law school were also provided with all the floral arrangements. The stunning bride even shared her big moment on Instagram and Tiktok (@offbeatorbit) where it went viral with millions of views. She even made a second video to show herself dancing slowly with her husband and planting a kiss on his lips.

"I’m still in shock that this all went down so well," Reese said about her whirlwind wedding. "At the end of the day, this couldn’t happen without the generosity of our friends and family. I’ve been acting as a caretaker for Rob since the spring when I was laid off from my short stint working as a contractor for Netflix. We had a GoFundMe following my layoff and Rob’s first hospitalization, but that money was reserved for medical costs and cost of living expenses, not weddings." 

Unfortunately, Reese made a post on her Instagram to share that her husband had passed away on December 8, 2022, after a grueling battle with cancer. "I got to spend nearly 9 incredible years with Rob, and I’m forever grateful for them. Like every couple we had some highs and some serious lows, and not just on the cancer front. We weren’t perfect, we’d never claim to be. But man did we love each other and work as a team through thick and thin," Reese captioned her post. At the end of the day, she might have lost her love but she got to keep a lot of precious memories.