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For Better Or Hurricane, Their Wedding Goes On

A persevering Port Charlotte couple keeps their wedding date with - thanks, Charley - a Ca d'Zan setting.

By LENNIE BENNETT, Times Staff Writer
Published August 22, 2004


	[Times photo: Douglas Clifford]
	Melissa Torres, 28, and Keith O'Toole, 30, kiss Saturday at their wedding outside the historic Ca d'Zan mansion.

SARASOTA - The ceremony was improvised. So was the aisle. But love, even among the ruins, will not be denied.

So the bride, wearing the dress made by her Aunt Nancy, walked to her waiting groom on Saturday, the date they chose eight months ago, before Hurricane Charley ripped through their Port Charlotte neighborhood and almost shredded their plans for a wedding in a nearby rented hall.

Melissa Josephine Torres, 28, and Keith Joseph O'Toole, 30, were married outside John and Mable Ringling's historic Sarasota mansion Ca d'Zan on the grounds of the Ringling Museum complex, in the shade of the stately banyan trees said to be a house-warming gift from Thomas Edison.

With them were about 40 friends and family, some of whom traveled from as far away as California, Ohio and Long Island, N.Y., even after learning the reservations they had made weeks ago at the Port Charlotte Days Inn could not be honored. Those rooms were being used by relief workers and the storm's dispossessed.

"We understood completely," said O'Toole, who works for a wine and beer distribution company.

And they knew they were among the most fortunate. They rode out the storm in their house, huddled in a hallway with their three dogs, as wind and rain lashed around them. When they emerged on Aug. 14, a week before the nuptials, the area was in chaos. No one had power or water. Many of the homes had been at least partially destroyed. But only one of their windows had blown out, and the roof, though covered in debris, had held.

The Benevolent Order of Eagles Hall did not.

"It's a mess," said O'Toole. "Water damage and, of course, no power. We didn't know what we were going to do." "But we knew we were going to get married on that day, even if it was in a field," said Torres. "Nothing was going to change that."

Her mother, Jeanne Torres, who lives in Sarasota, sent an e-mail to all her friends, asking whether they knew of an alternate venue.

"I got the message and felt so bad for them," said Dee Halpern, an events coordinator at the museum. "This rents out at $500 for a day ceremony and $5,000 after 6 p.m. I knew they didn't have that kind of money, so I went to my boss and asked him if we could donate it. He said "Great idea.' "

Torres, who grew up in Sarasota, had dreamed of a wedding there when she was a child.

"I was ecstatic," she said.

"We wound up pulling together a wedding we'd spent almost a year planning in four days," said O'Toole, who was also preoccupied with the chain saw he was using for most of the week to clear fallen trees from his property.

They lived for years in New York, where O'Toole was raised, "but after Sept. 11 we wanted to leave," Torres said, "and live near my mother."

So they moved to Florida about 21/2 years ago. She walks with a cane, after a disabling fall eight years ago left her leg with serious nerve damage that surgeries have not completely corrected.

They had talked of marriage for a long time, she said. "Our lives just seemed to fall into place here. After the storm we just felt so lucky, we decided to have a wedding no matter what."

So O'Toole's family, aunts, uncles, cousins, his mother and his siblings, including best man Terrance O'Toole, rallied, finding a few rooms at a Bradenton Days Inn.

"This was an important time for Keith and Melissa," said Harry O'Toole, an uncle who drove from Valdosta, Ga., with his wife, Barbara. "Keith's father died recently. We couldn't have not been here."

For the reception, another friend of her mother volunteered the community room at her Bradenton apartment complex.

The catered meal was modified. "Instead of chicken cordon bleu and roast beef, we're having party platters from Publix," O'Toole said. Torres' mother made a big casserole of stuffed pasta shells in tomato sauce.

The red roses were rerouted to Sarasota, where Melissa and her mother tied them into bouquets and boutonnieres.

The dress, satin with an embroidered overlay, finished one month ago by Nancy Boystak, Torres' aunt, survived the storm, too, safe in a closet of the couple's home.

The bridal party arrived at Ca' d'Zan at about 11:30 a.m. looking slightly dazed. The bride, whom her mother said was "shell-shocked" by recent events, was radiant.

Supported by her mother and brother Domenic, Torres walked without her cane to the spot where O'Toole stood, on the large tiled Zodiac installed by Mable Ringling almost eight decades ago.

Preceding her was maid of honor Fran O'Toole, Keith's sister, in red satin.

Officiating was retiree Mervell Gingras, a longtime friend of the Torres family who got a notary public license so she could perform this, her first - and, she says, last - wedding ceremony.

She read the words the couple had selected months ago, pausing for an unscripted quip when she came to the part about supporting each other through good times and bad, adding, "and through hurricanes."

Torres removed O'Toole's sunglasses so she could look into his eyes as she repeated her vows.

The DJ, with his own hurricane-related issues, was unavailable, so Domenic Torres brought his boom box. He perched it on a stool and popped in a CD.

"It has bride music on it," he said, as the strains of Richard Wagner's Lohengrin, by tradition, filled the air.

[Last modified August 22, 2004, 01:24:29]

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