'It's love in the middle of a disaster': The couple who married in typhoon floods

One year ago, a couple got married in knee-deep water amid a powerful typhoon in the Philippines. The wedding photos quickly went viral as they revealed remarkable resilience in a warming world.

The rain kept pouring as the wedding car inched through knee-deep floodwaters to the church.

It was 22 July 2025 and Typhoon Wipha was battering the Philippines with 130km/h (80mph) winds. Jamaica Aguilar already knew it was flooded at the historic Barasoain Church in Malolos, an hour north of Manila, where her wedding was to take place.

"I remember praying and asking, please stop raining just for today so we can enjoy this," Aguilar recalls, nearly a year later. "And luckily, it stopped when I [stepped] outside the car."

The make-up staff had warned her there would news crews, but she had brushed them off, incredulous and nervous. Now she could see them. Stepping out of the car, she spread the train of her dress outside the church, as the media lined up.

"I was just nervous, and thinking to myself, this is it, this is the one," said Aguilar. "Although this is not how I planned it, there it is."

Aaron Favila, a photojournalist with the Associated Press, captured the moment, and his photos immediately exploded online. In April 2026, he won a prestigious prize at the World Press Photo 2026 for the images.

Fossil fuel emissions are driving up climate extremes. In practice, what this means is that the scene captured by Favila is likely to become more common: a bride having to walk down the aisle barefoot and through floodwaters, while almost 10 million people in her country reel from the impact of a tropical storm. The Philippines has a long history of dealing with and managing floods, but climate change is now rigging the game.

Aguilar and her fiancé Jade Rick Verdillo had attended a mass at Barasoian Church on the eve of their wedding.

Halfway through, it started raining heavily. Floodwaters moved through the wooden benches, covering the church floor. "We were watching the news non-stop, and it was saying [the rain] might get heavier," Verdillo says.

The couple stayed up until 03:00 reading forecasts and texting the wedding planners, the church and their guests. Would the storm wane? Should they cancel the wedding? Would guests be able to make it?

The planners and the church offered to reschedule, but not their party venue. "I jokingly said to them that as long as there's food for the guests, it's OK not to have the tables," says Verdillo.

In the end, they decided to push through: whatever the next day would bring, they were determined that the wedding would go ahead.  

Favila almost missed capturing the wedding. He was 50km (31 miles) away in Manila, having lunch after putting together a breaking news package about flood-hit communities.

He heard about the flooded wedding just one hour before its scheduled start.

When he got the tip, he didn't hesitate. As the only photographer in the Manila bureau, he has covered many extreme weather events, "but never a wedding in floods".

Favila jumped into his company's car, but waist-deep floodwaters soon blocked it, so he left the driver and hitched a lift in a large rescue truck. When he saw the white gown in front of the church, he leaped........

© BBC