A bride donated bone marrow to save the baby from a stranger. The child lived – and was his flower girl.

As soon as Hayden Hatfield started walking down the alley, his eyes focused on his flower girl

The bride thought of their special bond – years ago, she had donated her bone marrow to help the toddler to fight a rare form of childhood leukemia. They stayed in touch through letters and phone calls and toys and trinkets sent by mail. They had become like a family. Now that Hatfield is getting married, she says, it meant for her to have the three-year-old at her side on June 9th.

"I did not want to leave her eyes" says about the moment she saw Skye Savren-McCormick wait at the altar of the Shiloh Baptist Church in Hartford, Alabama

" Knowing that she was not only there but that she was part of this life event for me, I was the most humble they do not understand how important they are to me. She said about Skye and her parents.

Hatfield, now 26-year-old Hayden Ryals, was registered as a bone marrow donor in 2015 said, when she had struggled, changing her major at Auburn University and still trying to decide what she wanted to do with her life and who she wanted to be.It was almost exactly a year later when she received a phone call – she was a match to an anonymous child of 1 year several miles away.

"I had started to ask me if I had a goal here, "she says. . "This phone call has given me a purpose."

After Skye was born in 2015, she developed petechiae, or bruises, said her father, Todd Savren-McCormick. The bruising eventually disappeared but then returned, and the child continued to fall ill. Four days before her first birthday, after months of doctor appointments and unanswered questions, Skye was diagnosed with juvenile myelomonocytic leukemia, a rare and aggressive form of blood cancer, according to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

Thus, on July 28, 2016, Alabama doctors extracted some of Ryals' bone marrow and the next day doctors in California transplanted it into Skye's bloodstream.

. Skye's father in Ventura, California, said her daughter had developed a bacterial infection and her spleen had been removed because of cancer complications. She then needed a second transplant – which was possible because Ryals had given enough bone marrow for two procedures, he said.

While Skye was recovering from the second bone marrow transplant, Savren-McCormick swelled up and the doctors diagnosed her with a second form of cancer – a post-transplant lymphoproliferative disease. He had attacked his eyelid on both sides of his neck, chest, and spine, his father said.

She needed chemotherapy, which meant that she needed another transplant

Savren-McCormick Because there are donation regulations, they returned to the Be the Match registry and found another donor – this time using peripheral blood stem cells instead of bone marrow. But the father said, "If Hayden had not donated his bone marrow, our daughter would not have made another donation, it brought us to a place where we could survive."

But Ryals said she did not do it. t save the little one.

"It has always been the other way around," she said. "She helped me, she saved me … it's the real hero."

During the past year, the two families remained in contact but never met face to face. In March, Ryals sent Skye a very special gift for her third birthday – an Elsa doll from the movie "Frozen", a poppy cover "Trolls" and an invitation to her wedding.

"I said that I wanted them to know how much I love them and how much they are wanted," said Ryals, who said that although she knew it was long, she mentioned how nice it would be for Skye to be her flower girl

Skye's father said that the toddler was under oxygen and was fighting graft-versus-host disease. But, he said, as the wedding approached, Skye improved and they took her to Hartford, Alabama.

Ryals and Skye met for the first time at the church one day before the wedding.Ryals said that when she came in, she was overwhelmed by emotion.She walked towards Skye , she said, and fell to her knees.

Ryals said that Skye's mother asked the toddler who was Ryals and she replied, "Hay-Hay," her nickname for Ryals. She embraced Ryals.

"It was like a fairy tale," says Ryals. She said that she thought, "I can not believe that I finally meet this little girl.

On June 9, Skye entered the chapel, opening the way with flower petals, as she had practiced – stepping, walking, dropping – her father said

Ryals said that there was not a dry eye in the church.

"It was amazing to me how many heart chords she was pulling all at once," she says.

Then Ryals went down the alley to marry his fiance, Adrian, wearing a draped bouquet of something from Skye and his parents – a gold medallion with the Skye photo hidden from one aside and a message engraved on the other: "This heart beats with yours."

"I have never been able to describe our connection, I have never been able to explain it," she said. "It was the way the more perfect than I've ever heard describe. "

During the ceremony, Skye was sitting quietly on the steps of the altar, playing with leaves on a nearby fern and shooting the bow on her dress, 19659002] Ryals said that she felt that she had known Skye and her parents all her life.

Skye's father agreed.

"C & # It's like we had a new family in Alabama and it was happy. "