An Ohio bride, Morgan Gompf, surprised her dad on her wedding day by paying tribute to their special relationship. She took a moment to greet her father in front of 250 guests before walked down the aisle to her now-husband, Greg, on June 25, 2016.
“I knew I always needed a moment with him before the wedding,” the bride told ABC News.
What Rick, who asked ABC News not to use his last name, didn’t know was that his youngest daughter had a surprise for him.
Gompf, 26, had taken Rick’s blue and black flannel shirt and had it stitched on the inside of her wedding dress. The touching “something blue” that Gompf wore made Rick, 60, break down into tears, which was captured in photos that recently went viral.
“Growing up on the farm, he always just threw on a flannel before we would go outside to do chores,” Gompf explained, “and he had a flannel [shirt] that he always wore, which was blue and black checkered.”
Her father still loves farming, and currently has livestock, horses, cattle and “every farm animal under the sun” on his current farm in Central Ohio.
Photographer Erika Brooke, who took the photos, told ABC News she loves the father-daughter moments at weddings because “a lot of the time, it gets overlooked or downplayed, but it’s always been my favorite moments of the whole day.”
Brooke, who’s been professionally shooting weddings for six years, said she didn’t know what to expect when Gompf went outside on the venue’s back porch to greet her father for the first time.
“I hope for the emotion that they gave me, but … it was just immediate tears for me,” she recalled. “Because I remember that moment with my dad, with my dad giving me away.”
The bride added that her father had no idea she had used the moment to honor him.
“When I showed it to him, it was pretty emotional for him and for me,” she recalled of her touching surprise. “We realized — without it being spoken — how important our relationship was as a father-daughter relationship.”
Gompf, who credits Rick with her love of the outdoors and farming, added that she and her dad are “probably best buddies in every sense.”
ABC News
