WATCH: "A Girl Named Storey" - Exclusive Wedding Video!

August 12th, 2003 at around 4PM, maybe 12 hours after my best friend Kris Dalene crashes into a tree and dies, my future wife Patricia Donna Storey faints on a high rise during a music video shoot and falls head first onto the concrete. I was sleeping. I hadn’t slept in almost 48 hours, except for the half hour or so I got before my then guitar player Omar called to wake me with the news of our drummer Kris’ accident. I hadn’t been sleeping very long when my cell phone rang again, I knew something was wrong. “Hello?!?” “Jesse, Patty’s okay.” “WHAT HAPPENED TO PATTY?!?” Remember when I said I’d never felt so powerless as when I had found out Kris had died on the way to the hospital? This was that times 10. I had just had a frightening reminder how fragile life can be and now I was about to get another. For a moment in time literally ANYTHING could have happened to Patty and I was terrified to find out. Powerless and afraid, “WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED TO PATTY?!?!?!" December 1st, 1999 was Patty’s and my first date. She was the Captain of the Cheerleading Squad and I had been eyeing her from the football field all season. She had a piercing smile and beautiful dark deep blue eyes. And she was ALWAYS SMILING. I had never met such a genuinely happy person. I decided I wanted a piece of that happiness. We went to the mall and got our pictures taken with Santa Claus and got Ice Cream. When we were getting the ice cream, I mentioned in passing that I loved “Cotton Candy” Bubble Yum so I might try the Cotton Candy flavored ice cream. The next day at school she shows up with a pack of Cotton Candy Bubble Yum. Such a simple thing, but I’m in love. She is too and ready to marry me by month number six. I convince her that’s a bad idea and we needed to get to know each other better before we did anything like that, but we’re still together so hey. All my wife has ever wanted is to raise a family and as soon as she found me she was ready to go. We were 17 years old, she was a Senior and I was a Junior in high school. My plan was to be a rockstar in my twenties, get married in my thirties and raise a family there after, but I’ve got this girl who I love who is ready to start all that right now! Needless to say, I was in no rush, but three years later Patty, who likes some comic books, but is not a fan per say, booked a trip to a comic convention for her and I on her own birthday weekend! I was incredibly touched. At the time I couldn’t fathom sacrificing my birthday for a Barbie Convention, but Patty would do that for me. Patty made me want to be a better person and my mother always told me that’s what a good spouse does. So, I decide to ask her to MARRY ME! At the time I was working for MTV2 as a VJ, but I was still working construction for my wife’s father company on the side to make extra money and one night while helping him plow and shovel snow I asked him if I could marry his daughter. He was happy to say yes. Love that man. He even helped me get a great deal on a ring in Jamaica behind Patty’s back while we were all on vacation. Everything was all set for our joint 21st birthday party on August 16th where I would pop the question in front of all our friends and family. But FIRST my band BLAZED has to take a road trip to Kentucky to film a scene in an independent film. On the way home my best friend, drummer Kris Dalene falls asleep at the wheel and crashes his car into tree. My wife and I wake up and race to the hospital, but find out half way there that Kris is already dead. We pull over and cry, then head to the hospital to cry again with Kris' wonderful parents, sister and friends who were just as heart broken as we were. It was the most emotionally draining moment of my life. It was difficult to comfort each other, mostly we all just cried. By the time we got home it was day time and it just so happened to be the day my family was to shoot a music video for my dad’s project, “Van Helsing’s Curse”. Everyone was depressed over Kris, if my parents could have cancelled they would have, but they’d already paid to rent all the equipment. My wife and I were both supposed to dress up as part of the chorus of “druids” in these big heavy robes, but my family begged me to stay home and get some sleep. Patty had just lost a night of sleep as well, but didn’t want my parents to lose another “druid” for the video. At some point during the shoot, under the hot lights, in between thoughts of Kris and fresh tears, my wife’s legs go numb. She thought about telling someone, but she didn’t want to interrupt the take. She decided to close her eyes and wait it out. Patty hit the ground HARD and stopped the music video production in it’s tracks. My parents were terrified to turn Patty over. When they did they were pleasantly surprised, at first, she had only a small cut on her chin it seemed, but then the blood began coming out of her mouth. She would wake up screaming seconds later, when my mother applied pressure to her bleeding chin. We wouldn’t know this until the next day, but Patty had broken her jaw and my mom was really hurting her. Patty’s brother and sister were on scene helping out my family playing “druids" as well and they were freaking out. My mother yells, “DON’T ANYONE TELL JESSE.” Patty is rushed to the hospital. And that’s where we came in, August 12th, 2003 at around 4PM, maybe 12 hours after my best friend Kris Dalene crashes into a tree and dies. I hadn’t been sleeping very long when my cell phone rang, I knew something was wrong. “Hello?!?” “Jesse, Patty’s okay.” I could tell from her voice, “WHAT HAPPENED TO PATTY?!?” I rushed to the hospital as fast as I could and took my engagement ring with me, the universe may have taken my friend, but it would not take Patty before I told her how I felt. Patty’s dad stopped me in the parking lot and convinced me not to ask her at the hospital and to wait and ask her at our party like I had planned. He told me not to let this change anything, Patty was gonna be okay. I put the ring away in my glove box and went into see her, the nurse told me that when she heard my voice her heart monitor began to beat much faster. That's love, no? The nurses at the hospital had missed her artery multiple times and blew her arm up, it was swollen literally twice as big as normal, it looked fake. I was furious. But she was alive. They stitched her chin and sent her home. The bleeding in her mouth was from her biting down on her tongue in the fall, but the doctors said that would go back to normal. The next morning my future wife was still struggling to open her mouth and was beginning to notice that her teeth were lose. Confirmed when she pulled a huge chunk out of one of them. She was rushed to an oral surgeon and rendered unconscious. When she woke up her jaw was wired shut and she was handed a dozen marked bags, pieces of her teeth that had come loose in the fall. Patty would continue losing pieces of her teeth for a decade after, thanks to the hairline fractures she sustained in that one face plant. Wired, stitched and healing I proposed to Patricia Donna Storey on August 16th, 2003 in front of all our family and friends, except Kris. That was hard. She said, yes, or at least she tried to, it’s hard to say anything with your jaw wired shut. It was the happiest moment of my life directly on the heels of my two worst. I was very grateful despite my sadness. A few days later there was that huge power black out on Long Island. A few days after that my uncle Vinny was shot in the face in New York City. I was so numb at that point, I’m not sure I ever really grieved for him, but I was grateful to have seen him one last time at my engagement party. Patty and I were married four years later on Friday the 13th in July 2007. At our wedding my band and I surprised her with a new song. You may now be familiar with the Storey. Love and Respect, Jesse Blaze Snider (September 5th, 2016) Check out the video from the wedding of me performing “A Girl Named Storey”…!