Missing your wedding day is more than a headache — but this groom’s reception-ruining migraine turned out to be much more serious.
Nathan Vaughan had no choice but to miss his wedding reception in May after tying the knot to his now-wife Katie Vaughan, née Glass, because of a “painful” migraine, spending the evening “passed out” in his Cambridgeshire hotel room instead of celebrating his marriage.
While he initially brushed off the headache as pre-nuptial jitters, it persisted for three days and resulted in a trip to the emergency room, where he was diagnosed with a brain tumor that required surgery.
“I took pain killers, migraine tablets and assumed it was wedding day nerves, feeling the pressure a little bit. But it wouldn’t shift and progressively got worse during the day,” Nathan, 30, told Kennedy News, adding that up until 2 a.m. the morning of his wedding, he had “been fine.”
“[For it to be] the wedding day of all days, it’s crazy.”
Even the photographer noticed the groom seemed “a bit off,” and Nathan eventually was sequestered to his bed while experiencing the “worst headache of my life.”
“I was thinking ‘I’m never going to live this down,’” he recalled.
“My first thought was ‘my wife is by herself on our wedding day.’ I’m laying upstairs wrapped with guilt that I’d left her alone.”
But Katie, 26, “did brilliantly” and “kept the reception going” all by herself, despite being “gutted” that her new husband was sick the night of their wedding.
“I told the kitchen ‘you might as well cut the cake’ and I’d just get on with it,” she remembered. “My dad did a dance with me at the end of the night, bless him.”
But three days later, the pain persisted, and Katie rushed Nathan to the hospital where doctors diagnosed him with a benign pituitary gland tumor, which they described as being as large as two thumbnails.
“It hemorrhaged in the morning [of my wedding] so I was bleeding in my brain,” he explained, adding that it required a four-hour surgery to be removed because it was pushing against his optic nerve and affecting his vision.
“I don’t think Katie realized how soon after saying ‘in sickness and in health’ that she’d be looking after me. It’s a long recovery process.”
While the couple is thankful that things could have been worse but weren’t, they have issued a warning about the little-known symptoms of a brain tumor that easily mimicked a migraine.
“I can imagine a lot of people would put it down to a headache and not think to get it looked at really,” Nathan said, explaining that many people could have it their whole lives and not know.
“If it happened the day before, the wedding wouldn’t have gone ahead and if it happened the day after I would’ve put it down to a hangover from drinking and probably wouldn’t have got it looked at.”
Luckily, the couple had no plans for an immediate honeymoon, otherwise that, too, would have been interrupted by the tumor. Instead, they’re heading to Kos, Greece, next years where they’ll see “blue skies, beaches and hopefully migraine-free.”
“It was a weird time,” Katie said, recalling her big day. “I like looking at the pictures but at the same time it was a really weird day. Not what I imagined for my wedding day.”
While Nathan is “grateful” that he saw his “wife walk down the aisle,” the couple is re-doing their reception on their one-year wedding anniversary and inviting all their guests to celebrate once more.
“Do our first dance a year later and do my speech and a cake cutting,” said Nathan. “Better late than never.”
