A New Jersey couple who met at a memorial service honoring the lives of loved ones killed in the 1988 terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 will be wed a year after the man responsible for the attack was freed from prison and allowed to return to his homeland.
Sonia Stratis, 28, and Chris Tedeschi, 33, held the rehearsal dinner for this weekend's wedding on Friday, a year to the day that convicted bomber Abdel Baset al-Megrahi was freed from a Scottish prison and returned to Libya. Al- Megrahi was released for humanitarian reasons following a diagnosis of advanced prostate cancer. At the time, doctors said he was only expected to survive a few more months, but he is still alive.
Georges DeKeerle, Getty Images
Officials inspect the wreckage of Pan Am flight 103 on Dec. 21, 1988, in Lockerbie, Scotland. An American couple who met at a memorial service honoring victims of the bombing are marrying this weekend.
Stratis lost her father when the Pan Am jet exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing all 259 passengers on board as well as 11 people on the ground. Tedeschi's father married a woman who had been widowed because of the attack, and he grew up with her three children.
Stratis and Tedeschi met two years ago in Virginia while attending a 20th anniversary memorial dinner for the victims of the bombing, the New York Daily News reported.
"The first thing I noticed about him were his eyes and his laugh--he has a really great laugh," Stratis wrote of their meeting in a letter published by the New York Post.
Approximately two dozen friends the couple have made as a result of Lockerbie bombing memorials will be in attendance at Saturday's wedding. Stratis' father will be honored with bouquets of yellow roses, the same kind he used to give to her mother more than two decades ago.
"My mom is going to walk me down the aisle," Stratis wrote in the Post. "And I'll have an itty-bitty frame with a picture of dad pinned into my bouquet. That way, I'll be carrying him with me."