A bride surprised her blind groom with a tactile wedding dress comprised of multiple textures that brought her groom to tears.
The newlyweds, Kelly Anne and Anthony Ferraro, met in 2017 when they were enjoying time at the Jersey Shore with mutual friends, according to CBS. Kelly Anne noticed Anthony, who is blind, did not have a cane or a guide to help him around, she told CBS. “So I was like, ‘Why isn’t anyone helping you?'”
“Kelly grabbed on to me and was helping me the rest of the day,” Anthony shared with CBS News. “I was like, ‘This girl’s amazing.'”
About a month later, the couple had their first date when Anthony invited her to the premiere of the documentary, A Shot in the Dark, which chronicled his high school wrestling career as a blind athlete, according to CBS.
Anthony also practices judo and is training for the 2024 Paralympics in France, according to Insider.
Like any person preparing for a first date, Kelly fretted about what she should wear. She told CBS that she decided she would wear something that Anthony could feel.
“I remember my sister making fun of me because I was like, ‘I’m going to wear a velvet dress so he can feel it.’ And she was like, ‘That is so corny, he’s not going to feel your dress just because he’s blind,'” Kelly recalled to CBS. “And I was like, ‘No, he might! You don’t know.’ And it ended up being something that was so important to him.”
Anthony shared how moving Kelly Anne’s consideration was to him.
“I never told her anything. She went above and beyond and thought it through. No one has ever done that for me,” he told TMRW.
There was no looking back after the first date. The couple began traveling together to Anthony’s judo tournaments, according to CBS.
Anthony told Insider that life changed for him once he and Kelly Anne began traveling together:
I started noticing when I traveled with her, life started to change in a big way for me. I started seeing the world in a way I’ve never seen it. She would take the extra time to stop and slow down and take in every part of a landscape or a structure or something with me, and she would even close her eyes and try to feel it the way I would. And then, I would explain it to her, how I would see it, with my senses. She would fill in all the visual gaps for me and explain it in perfect detail.
As the couple’s wedding date approached, Kelly Anne needed to purchase a dress. “I really want something that’s a whole experience for Anthony,” she recalled to CBS.
Kelly Anne and her mother went to a bridal shop in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, where Kelly Anne found a gown with velvet tassels and multiple fabrics.
“When I looked up, I started crying,” she told CBS. “This is the dress I dreamed about.”
“She has this whole vision for a tactile wedding dress with nice textures like velvet and silk,” Anthony told Insider. “She didn’t know exactly what she wanted, but she knew it had to be tactile and very different in that sense. And she tried on a bunch of dresses there. She said when she put that one on, she just started crying.”
To go along with her dress, Kelly Anne purchased a jacket with velvet tassels, according to CBS. “That was the real kicker,” Anthony told the outlet. “It was velvet, just like our first date.”
Kelly Anne was so excited to show him the dress that she met him at the altar before the ceremony and asked Anthony to feel it, according to CBS. “When I was feeling the dress, it was just creating this image of an angel in my brain, it was just beautiful,” Anthony said.
“Once she gets to me, she puts (my) hands on (her) dress. My mind was blown and I started crying,” Anthony recalled to TMRW. “Tactile stuff is really big to me. It creates an image of what you look like in my head. Kelly looked like an angel.”
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