Wedding party bus gets "Storrowed," strikes low bridge on way to Boston reception
Varteni Akian and her husband Steve had just gotten married at St. James Armenian Church in Watertown on June 21 and were headed to their reception at Venezia in Boston. When they got to the Anderson Memorial Bridge by Harvard University, the driver tried to pass through.
"He tried to pass the clearance chains, which he did, and then he made contact with the bridge and then paused and started reversing on Storrow Drive to be able to make the exit ramp to take Mass Pike to get to Boston," said Varteni Akian. "It delayed us but we didn't need a police escort to be able to reverse safely, by some miracle."
Varteni Akian credited her husband for calming everyone down after the moment of impact.
"I think there's panic on every single one of our faces, except for my husband who's always calm, cool and collected. He was like, 'Everyone, it's going to be OK, we're going to have a great time and nothing is going to stop us from having the best day ever,'" said Varteni Akian.
"I think the adrenaline of the whole, we just got married, we're heading to a party, this just happened. When it happened, honestly, I was like, 'OK, this is kind of cool. This is a pretty eventful thing to occur on an eventful day.' So it kind of just added to our experience," said Steve Akian.
Varteni and Steve said they didn't have a follow-up with the party bus company but they still got to enjoy their wedding day together. No one was hurt in the "Storrowing."
"The whole day was so eventful that this was just one little piece of it but it's a story to tell for our future," said Varteni Akian.
"It happened, fortunately we didn't allow it to put a damper on our day, it added to the experience...we're just enjoying the whole thing," said Steve Akian.
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