The North Carolina woman whose marriage was put off last year when a bachelorette party pool accident left her paralyzed, is getting married this week.

Twenty-five-year-old Rachelle Friedman will go down the aisle this Friday tying the knot to Chris Chapman who has waited to exchange vows since the accident. Rachelle is wearing the same gown she initially chose for the wedding; however her father will push her wheelchair down the aisle instead of walking alongside her.

Rachelle was celebrating with her girlfriends a month before the original wedding date when one of her friends pushed her in the pool and she awkwardly hit the cement bottom.

She said the accident was no different from the way her friends had joked around several times before.  Rachelle refuses to call it a prank, because the intent was not harmful.

The freak accident that not only changed Rachelle’s life also changed her friends, whom Rachelle has stuck with and refused to reveal her identity.

“She was tragically hurt, mentally and emotionally. And I was tragically hurt, physically,” Friedman says.  “It”s harder to deal with when you”re hurt emotionally sometimes than when you”re hurt physically.”

Rachelle says she is moving on with her life,

Neither she nor her soon to be husband, Chris Chapman, ever considered leaving the other. They”d been dating for nearly five years when the tragedy happened.

“You have to know me and Chris to understand,” Rachelle says.

Chapman, a 28-year-old middle school science teacher says he shares her same opinion.

“It was not, “What am I going to do?”” he says. “It was, “what are we doing to do?” … I just didn”t know what to do next. It was one step at a time.”

The two met while they were both students at East Carolina University.

The happy couple will exchange vows this Friday at The Fearrington House in Pittsboro,NC.