HAMPDEN – Kimberly Stowell and her fiance, Nick Raymond, will be treated to a hometown wedding, after all.
The couple competed on NBC’s “Today” show last week in the “Today’ Throws a Hometown Wedding” competition.
To the disappointment of Stowell’s family in Norway and Paris, a couple from Maryland was chosen by viewers to win a wedding hosted by the show.
Stowell went home to Hampden, happy just to be marrying Raymond, regardless of whether the ceremony appeared on national television. Undaunted, they went back to work on their plan to be married in August 2006.
Tuesday night, the couple went to a party at a friend’s house, and all those plans changed.
Unknown to Stowell and Raymond, their friends had been asking businesses to help create their own “hometown wedding” for the couple. At a surprise party attended by the WLBZ television news team, they presented the two with everything they would need to throw their wedding.
“We were pretty shocked to show up and see all those people there, including the Channel 2 news team,” Stowell said. “It was pretty amazing.”
Friends presented the couple with gift certificates for dresses for the bride and bridesmaids, rings, hair and makeup, limousine service, flowers, and “pretty much everything we’ll need for the wedding,” Stowell said. Businesses even donated $500 toward a fireworks display and a personal trainer for Stowell.
The only catch is the wedding date. All the donated services are for Sept. 24 of this year, “a lot sooner than we’d planned,” Stowell said.
The coming month promises to be a busy one for the couple.
“I’ll feel a lot better when we get the invitations sent out,” Stowell said. Fortunately, they’re already paid for.
Stowell is the daughter of Brenda Sessions of Paris and Al Stowell of Norway. She is a 2000 graduate of Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School and a full-time student at the University of Maine working on a master’s degree in psychology.
Raymond is a graduate student studying school administration and a high school math teacher at Hampden Academy.
The two met on a blind date for a Halloween party.
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