Health: South Jersey Newlyweds Celebrate A New Lease On Life

By Stephanie Stahl

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- South Jersey newlyweds are celebrating a new lease on life.  Their wedding was temporarily side-tracked with a long awaited trip to the hospital.  The bride needed a kidney transplant and as she was about to exchange vows with her true love - fate intervened.

There's a frozen piece of wedding cake that Carrie and Dan Hallock didn't get to cut together.  Plans for the big day in Marlton last weekend were derailed when Carrie got a lifesaving kidney transplant.  "It's awesome, I couldn't ask for a better wedding present," Carrie says.

She'd been waiting on the transplant list for three years, kept alive with dialysis that caused her arm to become disfigured.

After months of planning, Carrie was doing last minute errands the day before the wedding when she got the call. Hours later instead of walking down the aisle, she was recovering at Penn Medicine.  Dan and the family visited, dressed up in what they were going to wear to the wedding.

"This has got to be a fairy tale wedding .. I got a kidney and I got to get married to this handsome man," Carrie says.

A few days later Carrie and Dan got married at the courthouse.  They're now spending their honeymoon  making sure she gets her meds and taking short walks.  Dan says, "Now we look forward to Carrie getting better and starting our new life together."

But there's one more thing a card from her son that said:  You got a kidney and congrats surprise you're going to be a grandma.

Carrie has lot's to celebrate.

And by the way, Carrie now has three kidneys -  the new one, that's implanted below her belly button and the old ones, no longer functioning, are left in place because doctors say removing them requires additional, unnecessary surgery.