When all flights are grounded, couple scrambles to get married

While one sister combed lower Manhattan hospitals searching for a loved one feared dead in the World Trade Center rubble, the other sister stood beneath a chuppah 3,000 miles away.

"I would not have conceived of a situation where one of my daughters would marry, and one of my daughters would not be present," said Elizabeth Biller Chapman, the sisters' mother.

Nor could she have conceived of the problems the bride, the groom and the guests would have arriving in time for a wedding in Palo Alto the Sunday following the Sept. 11 attacks.

Katherine Biller, 28, and Bennett Freeman, 44, spent more than a year planning their Sept. 16 wedding. "We were about to set the record for the least stressed lead-up to a wedding," said Freeman, a business consultant and a former deputy assistant secretary for democracy, human rights and labor in the State Department. "We had every detail in perfect order."

"We weren't even breaking a sweat before Sept. 11," said the bride, now Katherine Freeman, who was in a Washington, D.C., Pilates studio, where she's training to be an instructor, when she heard about the hijackings.

The couple was scheduled to fly Sept. 12 from their home in Washington to California for their wedding. No planes were flying. For days they grieved with the rest of the world and with the bride's sister, whose boyfriend's brother worked for Cantor Fitzgerald on the 105th floor of the World Trade Center.

"It was such a depressing week," Katherine said. "I was numb, unable to make small decisions. Reading the paper and crying at the breakfast table."

Her husband agreed. "It was very difficult, not least because we were, like all Americans, in a state of shock, really traumatized, and it was hard to be focusing on our own affairs," Bennett Freeman said.

At the same time, his wife said: "We didn't want to let terrorists win and take away our freedom or our right to get married and have a joyous celebration. We couldn't imagine postponing it."

So she began making serial telephone calls to United Airlines. She kept waiting on hold, booking and rebooking flights. None got off the ground. Finally, that Friday, the couple went to Dulles International Airport, checked their bags and got ready to board.

That flight, too, was canceled.

Tired and weary and worried they'd never make it, they caught a flight to Los Angeles, stayed overnight at an airport hotel and got a shuttle the next morning, Saturday, -- the day of the rehearsal dinner -- to San Francisco.

What should have been a six-hour trip turned into a 22-hour journey. "The bride and groom arrived in a fairly dilapidated state, having been on the road for nearly 24 hours," said the bride's mother.

Their luggage remained in the air. Their bags had been on the canceled San Francisco-bound plane. The wedding dress was hanging in a closet in the bride's mother's Palo Alto home. But the groom's rehearsal and wedding suits were somewhere in the friendly skies.

"We didn't know if it would make it," the bride said. "We discussed plan B. We just decided it will be a miracle if we get there."

Their bags did arrive at about 2 p.m. at San Francisco International Airport. So did the bride's 84-year-old grandmother, who caught one of the first flights out of Boston's Logan Airport. The groom's father and his wife also made a photo-finish landing from Washington, D.C.

Rabbi Sheldon Lewis of Congregation Kol Emeth married the couple in the Elizabeth F. Gamble Garden on that sunny-in-the-70s Sunday. Lewis talked about the Jewish tradition of life needing to go forward. And he talked about the hope that Katherine and Bennett Freeman's marriage symbolized.

"It was very emotional," Bennett said. "Because of the tragedy, I think it was a more emotional and maybe even a more joyous occasion. The paradox is that it was a wedding against a backdrop of somber tragedy. At the same time, it turned out to be a very joyous occasion."

"It was very moving to be with loved ones," Katherine said. "Everyone felt much better connecting with other people and being part of something happy. Everyone needed something happy."

The newlyweds, who met hiking in the Peruvian Andes, had planned to spend their honeymoon in Morocco. Fearing the trip would upset relatives, they instead rented a convertible Mustang and drove to Big Sur.

A few weeks later, the Freemans went to New York to spend the weekend with Katherine's sister and attend a memorial service for her boyfriend's brother.