Although Paralympian Katy Sullivan almost lost everything in a fire, she didn’t let it stop her from having a dream wedding amidst the chaos. Katy and Scott Aiello got engaged in the fall of 2022 and she had planned to surprise her fiancé with a dinner party turned wedding ceremony. Shruti Menon wrote story on the couple’s unexpected nuptials for Upworthy.
Katy is a congenital bilateral above-knee amputee who went on to compete on the US track team in the London Paralympic Games. She is also a Tony-nominated actress and the first female amputee to star in a Broadway show. Scott is also a fellow actor and the pair have been together over 6 years. The Friday before the scheduled dinner party that weekend, the couple was forced to evacuate their home when an apparent lighting strike hit their apartment complex and started a fire.
“We walked out of that apartment with our laptops. I had my prosthetic legs, my purse and our dog. He left his wallet and his cellphone in the apartment. I was saying to somebody the next day: a man is more concerned about getting you and your dog out of a burning building, and he leaves his phone and his wallet. You marry that man,” Katy said.
After discussing her plans, the couple decided that they should still move forward with the wedding. On Sunday, July 30, Katy and Scott had their wedding at his mother’s house which held a special significance since it was where he grew up. “I think when you’re faced with something so devastating… it just felt like we were deciding to choose joy and deciding to move forward with a commitment to each other. We’ve been together so long and we’ve been together through so much that it just felt like the right thing to do in the face of this horrible [fire],” Katy added.