Friends Help Homeless N.Y. Couple Have a Real Wedding and Honeymoon

NEW YORK —  They almost didn’t get their marriage license because the bride had no photo I.D. The wedding gown was a borrowed prom dress. And their friends took up a collection for a honeymoon night in a real hotel.

But being homeless didn’t stop Lucy Diane Dickerson and John Doster from tying the knot Saturday, proving again that home is where the heart is.

“I think they’re sweet together,” said Wendy Fox, one of about 75 guests--most of them homeless--who attended the ceremony at a drop-in center in Manhattan.

The bride, 49, wore a pink lace-and-satin gown borrowed from a center employee. The groom, 53, wore a donated suit.

The gifts included a Section 8 city housing form, wrapped in shiny paper with a bow. Doster’s caseworker, Jim Kwiecinski, said the city’s Emergency Assistance Unit had promised to come through with an apartment in a few days.

The groom’s brother, John Caserta, said Doster had been homeless much of his life and that he met the bride at a bus station after she arrived from Atlanta in 1992.