Kiersten Downs was ready to enter the rustic barn venue to marry the love of her life. With a wedding reception like no other, the young lady couldn’t wait to see her dazzling groom. However, nobody could find him.

Originally being completely overwhelmed with excitement, Kiersten Downs was now panicking at the prospect of her big day collapsing before her very eyes. But then, Michelle, her wedding planner, brought her into the barn. Something fishy was going on…

As a bride, you want everything to go exactly according to plan. So if any crazy surprises happen or something doesn’t go your way, it’s understandable to feel a little stressed out.

This certainly applied to Kiersten Downs, who entered the barn-turned-ballroom hoping that her groom would be on the other side of the barn door. At that moment, Wishing Well Barn’s wedding planner Michelle told Kiersten that the groom, Thomas Martineau had simply gone to the bathroom. However, that definitely wasn’t the truth…

35-year-old Kiersten Downs should have been more used to unexpected occurrences, especially after serving in the Air Force. The Tampa, Florida resident and her groom to be, 33-year-old Thomas Martineau, both did the noble honor.

In a sharp twist of irony, he returned from duty after suffering zero injuries, only to end up in a terrible motorbike accident a decade ago. The accident, which happened before he met Kiersten, meant that Martineau would be paralyzed chest down, losing the use of his legs…

Despite the physical challenges that Thomas has faced, the couple has adapted over the years and, having met him after his accident, Kiersten didn’t know him any other way.

Certainly not your typical couple, Kiersten and Thomas’s shared involvement in the Air Force was certainly a great way for them to break the ice. Interestingly, the couple actually met on Facebook. Kiersten had been looking for a player for The Tampa Bay Strong Dogs, a basketball team comprising of disabled veterans.

Although a number of logistical problems have been thrown at them over the years, especially where their wedding plans are concerned, Kiersten and Thomas have never lost hope that one day they would tie the knot.

Determined to have Kiersten’s grandmother attend their nuptials, they moved the date to December 2016. After meeting the rest of the Downs family, buying Kiersten’s wedding gown, and putting the down payment on the venue, everything seemed to be going to plan. Until…

It was just a matter of days prior to their big day that Kiersten and Thomas received a huge setback in their wedding plans. It turns out that the groom’s paralysis was causing some unforeseen problems and, as a result, he needed to be taken to an emergency room immediately.

There is no doubt that this was a challenge the couple had not seen coming. After spending so much time fighting for some quality medical care from the hospital, they now faced this huge problem.

Despite facing such a tough ordeal just days before their wedding, Thomas would get some much needed good luck at this critical time. However, with his health being the top priority, the couple chose to reschedule the event to March 2017.

“Being in the chair, I thought I could never be able to live up to being the husband that she could have,” he said. “That was a fear I always had: Having the wedding…and having to settle for things as they were.”

While both the bride and groom were rescheduling the event together, Thomas took some matters into his own hands as he was keeping a secret from Kiersten.

As she was busy studying for her Ph.D. in applied anthropology at grad school, Thomas was able to be very discrete without his partner growing suspicious. While she was in the home stretch after six long years of study, Thomas saw the opportunity to plan something special that she would never see coming…

Thomas’s remarkable story began back in 2004 when he joined the Air Force. For four years, the man who would eventually be Kiersten’s groom worked as a Tactical Aircraft Maintenance Technician. Eventually, he would earn the rank of staff sergeant and was a well-respected member of his team.

However, his entire experience in the Air Force would be marred by the motorbike accident that happened after he returned home from service. Feeling “depressed and despondent,” Thomas needed something to get his life back on track…

As for the groom’s bride-to-be, Kiersten Downs, she also had many reasons to feel proud of her service. Having also followed in the footsteps of her grandfather, who served in World War II, 18-year-old Thomas was inspired to continue the family’s legacy.

Amazingly, the first two of her three tours saw Kiersten travel to some of the smaller islands in the Pacific. It was here where she would load bombs. However, her deepest memory came during her tour in Iraq.

Upon arriving at her Iraqi airbase in 2006, Kiersten didn’t quite realize how painful and emotionally devastating war could truly be. And the moment that she started to see bombs hit Iraqi buildings, something struck a chord with her.

Walking through local hospitals and seeing the victims of the war also upset her a lot. Upon returning to the United States, Kiersten was a broken person and needed something, or someone, to come into her life to help her truly heal.

After returning home and being awarded a scholarship in honor of her service, Kiersten was still finding a way to make sense of everything that just happened in Iraq.

It was clear that the young lady would need a lot of time to process everything, with so many emotions going on at once. Then one day, she thought of a great idea: to ride a bike across the country. Amazingly, this 3800-mile trip may have been the reason she ended up meeting Thomas…

Of course, a lot of planning and training would need to be done in order to embark on a successful cross-country bike ride. However, upon starting her journey in California, Kiersten was in for a big shock to the system.

It was at the moment she began to pedal that it hit her – California is not a particularly flat state. Due to the mountainous landscape and the many sharp angles and steep roads, Kiersten was on the verge of a life-threatening accident…

The moment happened when Kiersten was in the middle of a high-velocity ride up a mountain, exerting all of her power with every pedal.

Although she was pulling through, the fact that she was alone made Kiersten’s life flash before her very eyes when the front wheel of her bike hit a pothole. Not only did she fly off her bike, but she fell hard on the asphalt. However, the accident carried on, ensuing with the arrival of a huge truck…

With a huge truck arriving around the corner, Kiersten jumped back on her bike and with as much adrenaline as possible, tried her very best get out of the way.

Just in time, Kiersten was able to get her bike and herself off the road as the tractor-trailer stampeded right through the spot she had just landed on. With her leg in an extreme amount of pain, Kiersten limped for six long miles before she finally found another human being. Amazingly, it was her mother…

Despite getting some much-needed support from her mother, Kiersten was dealt such a huge blow in her ride after just a week. In order to focus on her health, she took a step back from the journey.

Although her ride was postponed, she had raised money for the Student Veterans of America. Seeing that the charity had such a huge network of people involved, Kiersten received a ton of support and many students ended up doing the cross-country ride in solidarity.

Moving onto her next project, Kiersten started recruiting for a disabled veteran basketball team. It wouldn’t take long before Kiersten and Thomas started talking online and, while they struck a bond, it would take some time before they met in person.

After becoming the successful candidate for the basketball team, Thomas found himself in need of some help. Along came Kiersten to the rescue, with a box of Thai food. However, Thomas didn’t like it. “The food was horrible,” he said. “But I knew the moment she opened the door she was the one.”

While Kiersten and Thomas pretty much hit it off instantly, there were a few fascinating details that they would learn about each other. If it was somebody else, these details could have very much been a deal breaker.

Kiersten soon learned that Thomas had a couple of kids from a previous relationship. Also, Kiersten had previously been reluctant to marry anyone. However, the two were able to confront their pasts head on and embrace everything about each other.

After so many hiccups and speedbumps along the way, the bride and groom had rescheduled their wedding date for the third time. They were extremely hopeful that this would be the last time they would have to make any huge changes.

However, there will still some details about the wedding that hadn’t been hashed out, such as the nature of their first dance. “I thought I was going to sit on his lap and roll around and grab the kids to dance and sort of improvise,” she said.

After years of service and meeting so many unique people from different backgrounds, it made sense that Thomas would have a couple of connections here and there.

One of his friends, Stephen Hill, was a medical sergeant who eventually became a lead trainer at Tampa’s Step Spinal Cord Injury Recovery Center. Funnily enough, this was the very same place that Thomas had recovered from his own injury. It turns out that Hill would be the guy to work with Thomas on his top-secret plan…

Stephen Hill was the guy who the groom trained under in order to get into great shape for the wedding. Thomas knew that he needed to be in top condition for such a demanding day. In order to make it a surprise, he didn’t tell Kiersten about his training routine.

However, it was pretty easy, especially since his bride-to-be was so busy, immersed in her studies. That wasn’t all though. The two guys were up to something that would take the wedding day to another level…

It may have been a winter day in Tampa, but there was no denying that everyone was extremely excited about the wedding. Kiersten woke up at the crack of dawn and she simply couldn’t contain all of the emotions that she was going through.

With virtually everything prepared for her big occasion, all Kiersten needed to do now was sit back and have her hair styled and makeup done. However, her secretive groom was up to something else entirely…

While Kiersten was busy getting herself ready for the occasion, Thomas the groom was sitting back as he questioned whether or not his seemingly foolproof plan would actually work. Amazingly, there were only three people attending the wedding that knew about his plan.

These were him, the wedding planner Michelle, and his friend, Stephen Hill. Despite being completely prepared, Thomas was worried that something would go wrong. Nevertheless, the event was approaching and Thomas needed to trust himself.

When it came to the actual ceremony, both the bride and the groom were thrilled to look back on it knowing that nothing went wrong. Everything went according to plan when they recited their vows.

With all of their friends and family in attendance, nobody batted an eyelid when Kiersten, the beautiful bride, walked down the aisle in her incredible white lace dress. They recited their vows, exchanged rings and kissed each other before the big surprise ensued…

With the build-up to the wedding party in full effect, Stephen Hill pulled Thomas to one side to discuss their secret plan. “Steve came in the day of the wedding, and he was sure it was going to work,” he said.

“He was literally running around getting gear during the ceremony. It wasn’t until pictures afterward, the wedding planner, who was the only person in the loop, came and grabbed me.” Before he knew it, some music started to play…

When she was standing outside the barn venue worried about her seemingly missing husband, Kiersten was completely taken by surprise when the song “Unbreaking Your Heart,” which was planned for their first dance, started playing. At that very moment, Michelle dragged her inside, where Thomas was waiting for her.

The wedding planner explained that the groom was waiting for her in the barn’s secondary entrance. And although she was reassured that everything would be fine and she danced her way into the hall, something then happened that completely turned this story upside down…

Kiersten was absolutely lost for words. “I danced my way in and had to adjust my eyes because something was different,” she told Today. Amazingly, Thomas was not in his wheelchair. He was standing straight in the middle of the dance floor.

Overwhelmed with joy and confusion, Kiersten went over to Thomas and held him. In the most natural of ways, they started to dance in sync to their beautiful song. But how exactly did the groom overcome such a challenge?

It was a mystery that was perplexing everyone in attendance. The explanation behind the groom’s incredible recovery was pretty simple: Stephen Hill and Thomas had applied a system of wires to the ceiling of the barn, which supported the harness that was holding the veteran upright.

It wasn’t just Kiersten who was overwhelmed with joy to dance with her husband. Thomas’s kids were also delighted to see their father standing. They also got a chance to dance with their dad.

It was perfectly natural for Kiersten to be worrying about whether the harness was secure enough or not. Thomas and Stephen also raised their concerns while planning the audacious move. However, the entire trick worked and the newlyweds were able to dance the night away.

“When you surround yourself with a good community, anything can happen. We met people who put us in touch with Steve, through those open mics — they all had an incredible impact on us,” Thomas said.

Although it has been a long, exhausting journey leading up to Kiersten and Thomas’s incredible wedding, in their mind, it was all completely worth it. Now, they are very optimistic about the future and are ready for anything.

“I can’t express enough how important it is to…engage with the communities around you, whether they have a past in the military or they are civilians,” she said. “[B]uilding relationships is the key to successfully reintegrating after we leave the military.”

Many amazing Sci Fi characters are women, and are undoubtedly some of the coolest characters to ever grace the big screen. From fighting off cyborgs sent back in time, to rescuing space wizards from dark lords, these are some of the best female characters in Sci Fi, as well as what they look like today.

Sarah Connor’s transformation from damsel in distress to hero was witnessed via the first two Terminator movies.

Linda Hamilton received an MTV Movie Award for Best Female Performance and Most Desirable Female following Terminator 2, and she also recently reprised the role of Sarah Connor in Terminator: Dark Fate.

Mulgrew’s character, Captain Kathryn Janeway from Star Trek: Voyager, is sometimes looked down upon for her erratic command behavior, in which she sometimes handles things calmly, and sometimes very emotionally. But then again, unlike Kirk or Picard, her crew isn’t Starfleet, and she has no backup.

So she has to play as a mediator who juggles a ton of responsibilities and struggles no other captain has ever had to face. For that reason, we want to include her on this list, even if she isn’t appreciated by all the Trekkies out there.

Want to cement your place as a top Sci Fi heroine? Well, doing battle against horrifying aliens that spit acid and have a second mouth on their tongue is a great way to do that. We’re talking about Ripley, of course. This absolute boss sticks it to the aliens with no fear. What’s not to love?

Sigourney Weaver received Academy level accolades for her role, which is something that doesn’t happen often with how often the Academy ignores Sci Fi movies and roles. Even they couldn’t ignore just how awesome this actress and character were!

OK, so Uhura isn’t the warrior, ultimate soldier type Sci Fi heroine. Her place on this list is more of what she represented: Nichelle Nichols was one of the very few African American women presented in a big role on television in 1966. That role had a ton of influence.

Whoopi Goldberg, Dr. Mae Jemison, and even Martin Luther King were all influenced by Nichelle Nichols and the role she played: a strong, capable woman who was just as important and respected as all the other members of her crew, with race and gender having no bearing.

Dana Scully isn’t on this list because she’s rough and tough, but because she’s smart, rational, educated and intellectually competent. There’s not enough of those types of heroines in Sci Fi. Of course, Gillian Anderson’s character had to counter the crazy theories of her partner.

Playing a strong foil to another type of character is tough, and Gillian Anderson played a character that was perfectly straight laced: but also able to entertain some crazy theories herself, when the time called for it. Another great heroine with a fascinating dichotomy.

When it comes to wizards and withces, we’d be remiss not to include Hermione on this list of Sci Fi heroines. We guess you could argue that this series is more fantasy than Sci Fi, but who cares? What’s really important here is acknowledging that Hermione is a fantastic heroine.

Smart, capable, reliable and willing to punch Malfoy, Emma Watson perfectly portrayed this character, and her excellent performance throughout the years certainly served to skyrocket her career as an actress.

Ah, The Matrix. Serious cult classic right there. We won’t say that it was because of Trinity, the super awesome Sci Fi heroine, but her presence there certainly didn’t hurt at all. After all, some people felt that she was cooler than the main character, and who can blame them?

In fact, this was one of those roles that pretty much defined Carrie-Anne Moss’s career as an actress. No matter how cool she is in any other film, everyone will always recognize her as the actress who played Trinity. We call that the “Harry Potter Effect.”

We love our intellectual heroines because they get to prove that competence isn’t all about whether or not you can fight. Ellie Arroway is one such character who has to deal with contact from alien life that involves getting a faster than light spaceship built.

Oh, and she has to embark on it as the first human to engage in FTL. But in all of that, she’s a smart, rational character that keeps her wits about her no matter what happens, and we like to have those types of intellectually competent heroines from time to time.

Alice is in a weird place, as she exists in the Resident Evil movies but not the games. But she’s so cool in those six movies that she starred in that sometimes you wish she was a game protagonist. We’ll admit, the character Milla Jovovich gets a little too overpowered by the end of the movies, but hey.

Sometimes you enjoy a super overpowered hero that no one can take down, and that type of hero is something that female characters are rarely allowed to be for some reason. That said, we’re more than happy with the mark Alice has left on Sci Fi after all these years.

Sure, Tom Cruise was the protagonist of this movie about reliving the same battle over and over again, but Rita Vrataski had a way more heroic vibe about her: even when Cruise became competent as a soldier, she was always showing him up with flair and combative style.

She’s more of a classic type of Sci Fi heroine, taking names, but sometimes it’s nice to have a female character that can go toe to toe with any enemy, and never has that taken away from her for some stupid plot point.

Buffy Summers is beloved for the way she subverted silly horror movie tropes in which the ditzy blonde cheerleader always gets taken out first. Buffy turns that on her head, hunting vampires and having plenty of time for her love life in the process. Is it any wonder everyone loves her?

Best part is, Gellar’s character developed and matured greatly over the course of the series, to the point where she was eventually training a whole guild of future slayers. We’re all for that character development, it really adds complexity!

Initially a villain in Hercules: The Legendary Journeys Xena eventually got her own show, and in many ways it was even better than the show that spawned it. Xena is one of the few female heroes in Sci Fi that starts as a bad person but gets a truly noteworthy redemption arc throughout the course of the show.

Xena paved the way for a ton of heroines in Sci Fi after her, and that’s in no small part due to the fantastic performance that Lucy Lawless consistently provided for fans of this spinoff turned hero.

A stark opposite to Roslin from the same series, Starbuck is a heroine that’s more about punching stuff and being tough, which we always love. But she’s a deeper character than that, constantly torn between duty and her personal feelings.

It’s tough to put an interesting spin on the dedicated soldier schtick, but Kate Sackhoff manages to pull that off very well, which is a big reason that we value her contribution to the female Sci Fi roster so much. There’s always a place for the rough and tumble types!

Some Sci Fi has female heroes that play secondary roles to male protagonists, but not Olivia Dunham. A heroine that’s not afraid to stand up to her superiors while she investigates the world of fringe science even as she works to unravel a mysterious past, Fringe just wouldn’t be the same without her.

Of course, anything we can appreciate about a character is mostly thanks to their actor or actress, which in this case is Anna Torv. Without her excellent acting, even a well-written character like Olivia would fall flat.

What is there that needs to be said here? Sarah Jane Smith is one of, if not the most well-known companion of the titular Doctor throughout the long-running series. In fact, one could say that she pretty much established exactly what a companion was supposed to be.

Many companions in the series followed in her footsteps, but none of them could quite capture the same energy and atmosphere as Sarah Jane Smith, in no small part due to the performance of Elisabeth Sladen.

Any character who can unironically say “I am [blank] incarnate… God sent me.” is a character that needs to be taken seriously. That would be Susan Ivanova, whose long list of tragedies is a bit too long to talk about. Her cold Russian cynicism made this second in command type character a joy to watch every time she was on screen.

Strangely enough, even though Claudia Christian left the show at the end of season four, her character was still the one to deliver the final line of the entire series. Maybe that’s a testament to just how amazing her character was.

Everyone knows that Firefly is that one space western style show that ended way too soon, despite being beloved. That said, it still lasted long enough to provide us with some fantastic female heroes, such as Zoe Washburne, the smart-mouthed, admittedly morally ambiguous soldier with a soft side.

Really, she fits a mold that a lot of Sci Fi heroines do, but the trusty comrade that the male protagonist has a history with is something that can be done to perfection, and Gina Torres made sure that happened with her performance.

Number Six is very similar to a Terminator from the series of the same name: a Cylon made to look like a human. That said, she’s an excellent Sci Fi heroine (or antagonist, depending on how you look at it) because she’s so varied: trying to become human, actually becoming more human than many human characters.

Of course, she also plays an integral role throughout the events of the story, so having a compelling character arc and substantial stake in the story is definitely something that benefits Six’s spot as a heroine on this list.

Here we have a genetically enhanced super soldier that escaped from a shady government that created her, and when they find her again, she has to keep her friends safe while hiding the secret of her childhood. Does that sound like a compelling heroine? Because she was.

Unfortunately, once the show started focusing on characters other than her, it started to decline pretty heavily. Just goes to show that she was the heroine the show needed, and the one it deserved. They should have just stuck with what worked.

Some people may be upset to see Padme mentioned before Leia, but let’s be real: Leia’s mother did a lot more fighting, snarking, and politicking than her daughter throughout the trilogy she appeared in, so we have to give a slightly higher position to her.

It’s safe to say that this heroine wasn’t the only type of role Natalie Portman ever starred in, but it’s one of the few Sci Fi roles she took on. Is it too much to ask for Portman to get some more screen time now that Disney is making all these new shows?

Sure, Pitch Black technically launched the series that made our boy Riddick popular, but the main character of the movie was actually Carolyn Fry, who we love for a particular reason. It’s actually because of her immorality and real redemption arc.

Fry starts the movie off sacrificing crewmates for her own safety, and having a female protagonist who starts off as a bad person but actually had a redemption arc is pretty rare in cinema no matter where you look, which is why we love her so much.

When people think of Sci Fi heroines, they often envision the tough, brawling kind that win fights. But more people should envision the strategists that lead people and win battles on maps. That’s Laura Roslin from Battlestar Galactica, who pretty much leads the surviving human race.

Of course, at some point she goes a little crazy, but that just makes her an even better character, with a dichotomy between rationale and delusion that makes her compelling pretty much every single time she shows up on screen, in no small part thanks to Mcdonnell’s stellar acting.

Would this be a good time to tell you that this list isn’t actually ranking these heroines? We’re not making a statement on who is better than who: we’re making a statement on how amazing each character is, which includes Leia, an absolute classic of a Sci Fi heroine that many a heroine was modeled after following her debut.

It’s a sad day every time we remember that Carrie Fisher is no longer with us, but if there’s one thing that will never fade, it’s her legacy as one of the most memorable, most beloved Sci Fi heroines to ever grace the big screen. Don’t forget it, nerfherders!

People often forget that superhero movies do fall in the realm of Sci Fi. On top of that, people unfortunately tend to forget about Black Widow, probably because she isn’t superhuman in a world full of them. That said, she’s still an incredible heroine who takes names, all while looking great.

She doesn’t take trash from anyone, has great chemistry with her team, and doesn’t shy away from any challenge, which is pretty much everything we could ask for in a heroine. Now, if only they could actually get her movie out one of these days.

It’s hard for any female character to shine in a franchise where Hermione Granger exists. That said, Scarlett Byrne managed to do so as Pansy Parkinson, even if it was only for a brief while. We won’t say she was in another’s shadow, but at least she managed to be pretty cool while she was around.

Or maybe it’s just that Harry Potter as a franchise didn’t have a whole lot of focus on female characters, so any of them that managed to stand out was really easy to notice. Either way, we’re giving her a spot on this list.

There is no denying that Jadzia Dax was a thoroughly important character. Terry Farrell played the memorable Trill. However, it has been nearly 25 years since the talented actress was doing her thing in out-of-space. Since then, Farrell has had her fair share of roles, both on the big and the small screen.

She has appeared in movies such as Deep Core and Tripping the Rift, while also having a main role in the series Becker, playing the character Regina “Reggie” Kostas for a whopping 94 episodes.

Star Wars is getting a lot of mentions on this list, but then again, it is one of the biggest Sci Fi series of all time. Jyn Erso from Rogue One is often overlooked in terms of females from this franchise, but she deserves more recogntion.

Felicity Jones did a great job of portraying a compelling female protagonist that didn’t need the Force to achieve great things or overcome great obstacles. Moreover, she was a great hero because she managed to inspire others and rely on them: not by doing everything herself.

Despite a name that is ridiculous even by Sci Fi standards, Katniss Everdeen, played by Jennifer Lawrence, is a prime example of a more modern Sci Fi heroine that hits most if not all of the checkmarks needed for a great character. Strong yet vulnerable, inspiring leader, able combatant, everything you need.

Needless to say, her portrayal of the character was well-loved by everyone, as Jennifer Lawrence is in fact the highest grossing action heroine of all time. In other words, her role as Katniss Everdeen has made her a whole lot of money!

As evidenced by Ripley, the Alien franchise has no shortage of awesome female heroes. But special mention should go to Dr. Elizabeth Shaw, portrayed by Noomi Rapace. This heroine had to extract an alien baby from her own body using surgical equipment. Super metal!

Simply for portraying a seriously gruesome and gritty scene in a way that few actresses are asked to do, we feel that Noomi Rapace deserves a place on this list. Not every Sci Fi heroine has to be from far in the past!

Speaking of intellectual heroines starring in more realistic alien contact movies, Amy Adams as Louise Banks deserves a mention. Recent though this movie may be, Adams’ emotional yet subtle performance of a woman who has to translate an alien language while receiving glimpses of the future is something else.

In fact, we’re kind of upset that she hasn’t received any sort of official reward or accolade for the role yet, even though she provided such an excellent performance. What is the world coming to these days?

Playing a character that used to be a mindless Borg drone is harder than it sounds. But Jeri Ryan did a great job of portraying the freed drone Seven of Nine in Star Trek: Voyager. In fact, she did such a good job that she was nominated four times for a Saturn award.

She also did a good enough job to be called back to reprise her role in Star Trek: Picard. That being the case, it’s hard to deny that she’s the perfect actress for this strong and capable heroine, and no one seems to disagree.