Wedding: Trenise Williams had flowers, candles, a magnificent white dress and a groom in white tie and tails when she married Joseph Kirsh on Saturday.
But the wedding came a week later than planned and was held not in her local church in New Orleans but in a makeshift shelter filled with other desperate, homeless people in Jackson, Mississippi.
When Trenise glided down the aisle to the Wedding March played on a single saxophone, she had to navigate scores of mattresses on the floor, many strewn with children's clothes and cuddly toys. A floral arch stood before a backdrop of white bedsheets covering a wall of stacked chairs and the congregation sat on folding seats usually used for concerts and sports events.
Rev Horace Choate, one of three ministers who conducted the inter-faith ceremony, told the couple that their wedding would resonate far beyond the walls of Jackson's Coliseum stadium.
"There are thousands like you today, homeless and helpless. This wedding is a ray of hope for all of them," he said.
Trenise had planned to marry in New Orleans last Sunday but Hurricane Katrina forced her to flee the city that day, leaving her wedding dress behind as she loaded her fiance, her five-year-old son Sema, her mother Evelyn and six other relatives into a small van and drove east towards Texas. A few hours into the journey, the van broke down and the family sought refuge in a Pentecostal church. After a couple of days, they were moved to the shelter in Jackson, where Rochelle Smith, another homeless woman, decided that something must be done about Trenise's cancelled wedding.
A report on a local radio station prompted dozens of businesses and individuals to offer help in staging the wedding in Jackson. A bridal shop made Trenise's dress and the silk lavender gowns worn by her four bridesmaids, and kitted out the male principals, including little Sema, in tails.
David Luckett offered his luxury lodge for a two-day honeymoon. "I heard on the radio that the wedding had all fell through. The most important day of her life - I just had to do something.
"We're giving them a sit-down dinner tonight - steak and shrimp, champagne and chardonnay," he said.
Trenise wept as she spoke her vows, but the congregation cheered as the ceremony ended with a rousing blast of their home city's anthem, When the Saints Go Marching In and the bride and groom skipped off the altar.
As the wedding guests, mostly dressed in T-shirts, shorts and sandals, circled a three-tier chocolate wedding cake, Trenise told The Irish Times that the homeless shelter was the perfect place to marry.
"Everybody here has been showing us nothing but love. I wanted to get married surrounded by love," she said.
Gripping her husband's hand, she said that despite the suffering of the past week, now was not a moment to be downhearted.
"A lot of people lost a lot of things. We lost everything. We still don't know where we'll be tomorrow. We've just got to keep praying and letting things happen. We do know we are one now and that's all that matters," she said.