Lac-Mgantic newlyweds celebrate despite disaster

Manon Paris smiled for the cameras Saturday, perched on the train tracks where reporters had set up a lookout point in Lac-Mgantic, Que.

She was clear-eyed and beaming in her beaded white wedding dress, trimmed with red to match her new husband Marco Nuezs red dress shirt.

The sun was shining bright in a cloudless blue sky the perfect weather for a July wedding.

But Paris and Nuez had more than the sunshine to be grateful for.

One week earlier,to the day, they slipped out of their apartment in downtown Lac-Mgantic under a firefighters orders, a few possessions hastily packed, the wedding dress draped over one arm.

Paris, a language professor at Anhuac University in Queretaro, Mexico, and Nueza music producerwere married in Mexico.She brought her new husband to her hometown for the summer, including a local celebration of their nuptials.

Plans for their Lac-Mgantic wedding reception were all set.

Then came the runaway train and the explosion that followed a derailment on a bend in the tracks just a few hundred metres away from where the newlywed couple was living.

"We heard the first explosion and got on the balcony," Paris said. "We saw everything."

At first, they didn't think they were in any danger, until there wasanother explosion, and another, and the order from the firefighters that they, too, had to flee.

• TIMELINE: The Lac-Mgantic disaster

"We had three hours, so we had time to take our passports and important papers," Paris said. "And of course, we took the wedding dress!"

The couple was allowed back home three days later.Surveying the devastation, they at first thoughttheyd have no choice but to call off the party planned for July 13.

Then they began making calls.

"First we called the hall,"Nuez said. "They said, 'No problem. We can do it.'"

Then the cakemaker. She, too, was enthusiastic.

Rachel Longprs hairdressing shop burned to the ground in the fire. But she told Paris to bring the women in thewedding party to her house, where she'd fix everyones hair in her kitchen.

"Rachel was telling me she was excited to do be doing a wedding,"Paris said."So it was important to her as well."

Forty-eight people were invited to the gatheringat the municipal hall four kilometres west of the devastated town centre, right next to the beach.

All 48 guests showed up.

Nuez says he was happy to give people something to celebrate.

"We need to show that the most important thing you have in life is family," says Nuez.