Christmas is extra special this year for one Charlotte area family. A newlywed couple is expecting their first child, but the way the dad-to-be found out is as sweet as it gets.
Jamie Forbes planned every detail of her wedding day -- including an epic toast to her groom, Charlie.
“From the moment you left work to come push my stranded car I knew you were the one I wanted in my corner forever," Jamie said. "Please accept this gift -- it is the most precious thing I will give you and I hope it makes you as happy as you’ve made me.”
Then she handed her new husband a box, with a picture of a sonogram inside.
“I’m 2 months pregnant,” she said.
Charlie couldn’t believe it. “It was the shock of a lifetime but a good shock,” he said.
There was a time when Jamie Forbes wasn’t sure she’d get her happy ending.
“So many bad dates," she said. "I had decided I was probably never getting married or have kids, I couldn’t find anyone that wouldn’t be like settling.”
But then this March, she met Charlie on match.com
“Our courtship has been kind of a whirlwind -– pretty quickly we knew,” she said.
As for Charlie, he says simply, “I knew she was the one.”
By September he proposed, and at the start of December, with their dog as the flower girl and close friends and family to celebrate the two tied the knot.
“I just wanted something really simple, I figured why not do it now, why wait.”
Knowing they wanted a family, the couple also didn’t want to wait to start trying for kids.
“Because I'm in my 30s, we're both in our 30s we thought maybe it would take a year," she said.
The only thing Jamie did wait on was breaking the news.
“The morning I took the test, of course I wanted to go scream and wake him up," Jamie said.
She decided to wait though, planning to tell Charlie and everyone else at their wedding a month away.
"It was so hard, probably the hardest thing I've ever done," Jamie said. "I just thought it would be so special and unique and now we have it on video.”
Charlie is excited, to say the least.
“I tear up every time I see it,” he said.” “It’s the best gift I could have possibly received its amazing.”
They had a blood test and found out the baby is a girl, and they already have a special name picked out.
“Her name is gonna be Jillian after my sister who passed away almost two years ago," Jamie said.
After her sister faced a rare cancer that was diagnosed and turned deadly in just an eight month span, Jamie spent last Christmas mourning her baby sister.
“Last year I was actually very depressed," Jamie said. "It was my first Christmas without my sister, I was single."
This year's Christmas? Jamie says "one of the best of my life.”
Call it a Christmas miracle, a great love story or maybe just a reminder that some of life’s best moments are the unplanned ones.
“He made my dream come true," she said.
Their baby is due in July.
Our thanks to www.jamesbrindleyscamera.com for the wedding photos and CCNN Studios for the wedding video.