Bride battling breast cancer dies 18 hours after exchanging vows

A bride battling an aggressive type of breast cancer died just 18 hours after exchanging vows with her groom.

Heather Mosher, from Connecticut,  was diagnosed last December with breast cancer, the same day her then-boyfriend, Dave Mosher, proposed to her on a horse-and-carriage ride.

Dave Mosher, 35, told ABC News of the proposal: “I had planned to ask her on Dec. 23, 2016. That morning we had gone to the doctor after she had found a lump on her breast.”

A biopsy confirmed that Heather Mosher indeed had breast cancer, but Dave Mosher wasn’t deterred.

“Now more than ever, I needed for her to know that she’s not going to do this alone,” he recalled.

The couple had met at a swing dance group in Hartford, Connecticut, and quickly became friends before dating.

“When you’re with your great love … it’s like trying to separate your arm from your body, you can’t do it. You’re connected. She was my girl,” Dave Mosher added, choking up.

While enduring two rounds of chemotherapy and two surgeries, Heather and Dave Mosher planned their wedding. They were originally set to get married on Dec. 30 but Heather Mosher’s doctor suggested the couple wed “sooner rather than later.”

On Dec. 22, the couple exchanged vows in front of family and friends inside St. Francis Hospital in Hartford, Connecticut, on Dec. 22. Heather Mosher, who was on life support, lay in bed, wearing a wig, a wedding dress and jewelry. Heather Mosher’s friend, Christina Karas, who she met in the same swinging dance group four years ago, was one of her bridesmaids.

Karas, 36, told ABC News: “She was dying and it was clear while we were all there that these were the last moments of her life. She held on to stay alive for the wedding … a wedding to the man of her dreams.”

Dave Mosher noted, “Some of her last words were her vows.”

Heather’s family plan to hold a funeral for her on the day the couple had initially planned to marry, Dec. 30. Her husband said the coincidence was not intentional.

“It was just like surreal because I’m supposed to be exchanging vows to her and here I am saying goodbye,” Dave Mosher added.

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