‘Thought she was dead.’ Bride-to-be flies out of truck — but makes wedding next day

A bride-to-be was thrown from a truck during a move the day before her wedding in Utah.

But she still managed to tie the knot the next day.

Alex and Lydia Kessinger were moving into their new home on April 26 when they decided to have Lydia lie on top of their king-sized mattress in the bed of their trunk to secure it during transport, according to a June 6 news release by the Utah Department of Transportation.

“I was planning on saving two or three minutes, I thought that was gonna make a difference,” Alex Kessinger said in the June 7 video posted on Instagram by the Utah Department of Transportation.

While driving 50 miles per hour down a street in Provo, the mattress flew from the trunk, taking Kessinger with it, officials said.

“I remember looking in the rear view mirror and just seeing the flash of white,” Alex Kessinger told KSL. “I thought she was dead.”

Instead, the couple “wasted about 100 hours” going to the emergency room and the dentist because they didn’t take “two or three minutes to strap down a mattress,” Alex Kessinger said in the video.

Kessinger, who landed in the middle of the road, was able to get to the side, avoiding getting hit by oncoming traffic, officials said.

“I remember the mattress floating up with me on it and I remember screaming, flying in the air, and rolling on the asphalt,” Lydia said in a May 21 Instagram post. “I remember feeling my teeth with my tongue and thinking something was wrong.”

She first landed on her back but “bounced,” she said.

When her soon-to-be husband “ran over” to her, she smiled and that’s when he saw her teeth had been shaved down by the impact, he said.

But “in that moment,” she still “knew that everything would be OK.”

“I knew I was getting married tomorrow no matter what!,” she said. “I just knew that I could get a dentist to fix them in time for my wedding, and if not, we were getting married anyway.”

And despite some cuts, scratches and bandages to cover her burns, the two did get married on schedule.

“The whole entire day was a fairytale. It was magic,” she said on Instagram. “Just so perfect in every way. And by some miracle, the second I got to the venue, my burns didn’t hurt the rest of the day.”

Provo is about a 40-mile drive southeast of Salt Lake City.

This story was originally published June 7, 2024 at 12:01 PM with the headline "‘Thought she was dead.’ Bride-to-be flies out of truck — but makes wedding next day."