Beautiful bride battling cancer has passed away - Honoring Nicole Moore Zimmerman
HOUSTON (FOX 26) - Nicole Moore Zimmerman's excitement is infectious and almost jumps from her wedding photos. Lisa Nalven didn't have to meet the beautiful bride through pictures. She is the photographer who took them there at MD Anderson Cancer Center where Nicole was getting treatment and was too ill to leave the hospital to get married .
"I feel really blessed to have met her, to have seen her strength, to be able to be a part of something so beautiful," says Nalven. The photographer visited the 27-year old terminally ill cancer patient, turned newlywed, turned social media sweetheart in hospice a week after the wedding when she gave Nicole her phenomenal photos "and I watched her while she looked at her pictures at how happy they made her and I know she was in pain. When I left there it was heartbreaking. I don't usually break down but I left there I cried. I broke down," admits Nalven.
Now a week later the beautiful bride has lost her battle to cancer. Nicole's loved ones still have the beautiful images to treasure. "I love what I do. I'm able to do it. It's something that feels really important to me. It's part of my purpose," explains Nalven.
The photographer actually lives in Florida and is in Houston with her brother who's undergoing chemo. She documents life for a number of cancer patients who get to escape, even just mentally and briefly, the burden of battling an awful disease while posing and primping for a photo shoot.
"I'm so grateful I'm able to do it".
Nalven says ironically, she doesn't only give great gifts to those she photographs. She says she receives what money can't buy. "I found God through him," Nalven smiles while pointing to a teenager who has since passed away and from Nicole? Lisa Nalven says she was able to witness something so extraordinary it will live in her heart forever. "That's of the deepest value you can have".