The wound required 30 stitches
Credit: Jordan Downing (2)
NEED TO KNOW
- Jordan Downing got married on Feb. 20 in Longboat Key, Florida
- The bride sustained a serious leg injury an hour and a half before her ceremony, requiring 30 stitches, but ultimately proceeded with the wedding as planned
- Downing shared her experience as a message about resilience over perfection
About an hour and half before Jordan Downing's wedding ceremony, she was on the ground bleeding from a deep cut to her leg. Initially, she feared her wedding would be called off. Instead, she walked down the aisle.
Disaster struck when the 25-year-old bride was steaming her wedding dress hanging on a door inside her suite at The St. Regis Longboat Key Resort in Longboat Key, Florida, on Friday, Feb. 20. The steam triggered the fire alarm, which blared instructions to evacuate. After all the chaos and the alarm finally stopped, Downing felt "impatient" because they were "running out of time" and decided to quickly climb onto a chair to grab her gown — a decision that took a turn for the worse.
"It’s a heavy wedding dress, and while I was trying to lift it down I must have shifted my weight the wrong way. The chair tipped forward and I fell, and my leg hit the door on the way down," Downing tells PEOPLE. "At first, I honestly didn’t think it was that serious. I landed on my feet and even said something like, 'That could have been bad.' But then I looked at my hand and saw blood. When I looked down at my leg, I realized the cut was much worse than I thought."
@jetsetjordy
no big deal… just cut my leg open an hour before walking down the aisle 🙃 #wedding #bride #freakaccident
♬ original sound – leah
Downing's upper thigh had a "wide and deep" four-inch-long cut and the gash was "bleeding a lot."
The bride's family sprung into action, with her mother and mother-in-law applying pressure with a towel to stop the bleeding. Meanwhile, someone else called 911. Luckily, first responders were already in the building because of the fire alarm, so they sprinted to room right away.
"They checked the wound and told me I had missed my femoral artery, which was a huge relief, but they also said it was deep and definitely needed stitches," Downing remembers.
Credit: Dariela Hernandez | Wedding Tales Co
Downing "immediately started panicking." One second she was blissfully getting ready, and the next, she had a freak accident on one of the most important days of her life. Her photographer, Lyndsay Rae Photo, and her content creator, Dariela Hernandez of Wedding Tales Co, looked "completely horrified." Her normally calm mother was also "freaking out," and her sisters "started crying."
"It was this surreal moment where everyone realized how serious it actually was," Downing says. "I remember calling my soon-to-be husband right away. Later he told me that when he got the call, he didn’t even explain anything to his groomsmen — he just sprinted up to the room. My mind immediately went to the worst-case scenario. I had never had stitches or any kind of accident before, so this was all completely unfamiliar and scary to me. I couldn’t believe something like this was happening an hour before I was supposed to walk down the aisle. I kept thinking that it was all over and that I would never be able to do the wedding."
Credit: Dariela Hernandez | Wedding Tales Co
Downing's family friend, Dr. Raj, who happens to be a plastic surgeon and was staying on the same floor of the hotel, "really helped calm [her] down." As he wrapped Downing's leg tightly with multiple bandages to control the bleeding, he encouraged her to push through to the ceremony.
Seeing how everyone rallied around her was an "incredibly emotional" moment for Downing. Her husband, Emerson, never left her side, her loved ones did everything they could to help, and her vendors went above and beyond to make sure the day could still happen. She credits resilience and perspective for overcoming the significant mishap.
"It reminded me that a wedding is really about the love and support around you, not about everything going perfectly according to plan," Downing says, noting that a "sense of calm" came over her when she recognized that she had the "most incredible support system."
"At the end of the day, they were there to celebrate our love. They didn’t care about the timeline shifting or the fact that cocktail hour ended up happening before the ceremony, which was honestly a genius move by our wedding planner (Kelly Kennedy Weddings and Events) to give us extra time," she says, adding, "My makeup artist even came back after I had been crying to fix my makeup and touch up my bridal party so we could all pull ourselves together before the ceremony. Everyone just wanted to see us get married, and that perspective helped me focus on what actually mattered."
Credit: Lyndsay Rae Photo
She continues, "In a really beautiful twist, the timeline changes actually made the ceremony even more special. Because everything shifted, we ended up getting married right at sunset. After the ceremony, all anyone could talk about was how the exact moment we kissed, the sun was setting on the horizon behind us. No one cared about the timeline changes or anything that had gone wrong earlier in the day — they were just focused on that moment."
The morning after the wedding, Downing went to the emergency room, which she admits is not how she pictured starting newlywed life. She was joined by her husband, Dr. Raj, and his wife. At the hospital, Dr. Raj helped make sure the cut was stitched up properly to minimize scarring, which required stitching through multiple layers of skin. In total, Downing needed 30 stitches.
Credit: Lyndsay Rae Photo
Two days later on Feb. 23, Downing shared a clip from her wedding day disaster on TikTok, writing onscreen, "What could go wrong on my wedding day?" She added in her caption, "No big deal… just cut my leg open an hour before walking down the aisle 🙃." In a second video, Downing went into more detail about her freak accident. She tells PEOPLE that she posted her experience as a "reminder that weddings don’t have to be flawless to be unforgettable."
"I hope other brides take away that your wedding day doesn’t have to be perfect to be incredibly meaningful," she says. "When the injury first happened, I truly thought the entire day was over. I remember thinking there was no way I would be able to walk down the aisle, and it was heartbreaking in that moment. But very quickly I realized that the most important part of the day was still there — getting to marry the person I love, surrounded by the people who care about us most."
Credit: Jordan Downing
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She adds, "If anything, the experience made the day even more meaningful. It showed me how strong our support system is and how much love was in that room. I hope other brides know that even if something unexpected happens, the day can still turn out beautiful — sometimes even more beautiful than you planned."
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