By Gretchen Webster

WESTPORT — When Westporter Heather Galano Bennett imagined her wedding, she thought of herself walking down the aisle on her father’s arm. But her father, Anthony Galano, died of ALS in 2016, years before she was married.

“He was a sensitive soul,” she said of her father. “He was warm, the life of the party. He made every outing, every dinner amazing … He was always making people feel welcomed and loved.”

Last October, when she was married to the love of her life, Fairfield attorney Greg Bennett, she wished her father could be there. So she designed a special hand glass-blown vessel, incorporating some of her father’s ashes, to hold her bouquet.

A way to remember fathers

“I thought, he can’t walk with me,” she said. “What if I’m carrying him down the aisle?” 

In addition, the couple had a second blown-glass vase fashioned that blended her father’s ashes with some ashes of her groom’s father, Walter Bennett, who died in 2012, and held two white roses. 

The glassware rested on a “memory table,” along with photos of the two fathers, at the couple’s wedding reception in Vermont.

Pandemic delay gave time to plan special touches

Although unconventional, the presence of their fathers’ ashes meant a lot to the couple, and was a poignant part of a special wedding that had been delayed over a year because of the pandemic.

The delay was stressful, Galano Bennett said, but it also gave her time to add extra touches to the ceremony and reception that made it particularly memorable. This included having an artist paint a scene of the wedding that now hangs in her dining room, and finding a pair of vintage skis, which the guests signed in place of a guest book. The Bennetts are avid skiers, and chose Vermont, where they had also become engaged, as the perfect place for their wedding and reception, she said.

Galano Bennett is a veterinary neurologist, specializing in treating animals with problems of the spinal cord and brain at the VCA Shoreline Veterinary Referral and Emergency Center in Shelton. Her dog, Bodie, was also a participant in the wedding. 

But the most emotional part of all, she said, was when the couple not only recited their personal vows to each other, but when she wrote and spoke individual vows to her new husband’s children, ages 11 and 13. 

“We wanted them to be involved,” she said of the youngsters. “It all went perfectly … I put a lot of thought into every detail.”

Galano Bennett met her future husband online in 2016 and knew right away they were meant for each other. “There was no question. This was it,” she recalled. Referring to herself as “an older bride,” she had thought of marriage earlier, “but wasn’t going to settle.”  

Online dating wasn’t always easy, she added, “You have to get through a lot of the bad to get to the great … I feel very blessed, super lucky.”

It was important to her that her father was able to meet and get to know her future husband before he died. “Hopefully he passed knowing I was with a good man,” she said of her father.

Business helps preserve loved one’s ashes as mementos

Galano Bennett learned about the company, Celebration Ashes, which made both of the vessels fashioned with their fathers’ ashes, by searching online for ways to memorialize loved ones. 

The company, located in Seattle, designs “cremation glass art,” including ornaments, paperweights, globes, sculptures and small glass hearts often used to hold ashes of beloved pets, according to the Celebration Ashes website.

Galano Bennett worked with the artist who designed and made the pieces, choosing the colors and shapes. She found the company easy to work with, and willing to make the pieces she wanted to her specifications.

“I found a new way to memorialize a loved one,” she said, adding it was all worth it. She and her husband have the memories of their wedding, the vessels fashioned with ashes of their fathers in their home and the comfort of knowing those special family members were represented on their wedding day.