After suffering a brain aneurysm recently that landed Nan Schrack in Tampa General Hospital, she and longtime beau Mark Neville decided they should put it off no longer.

"I asked Jim [Mcneil] at the church, "what does someone do who wants to get married, but doesn't have any money?," Neville said, just before his hair cut this morning.

From there, a church volunteer at First Presbyterian of Brandon and Lela Lilyquist, director of the Portamento of Hope Café set to work arranging a wedding with at least some of the trimmings.
The couple is scheduled to marry at 1:30 p.m. at First Presbyterian.

Before that, though, an outpouring from the community is preparing them for the big event.
All About Beauty, a small salon on Mason Street took Schrack in this morning to give her the royal treatment.

"They're really treating her like a queen," said Tracey Crocker, an Americorps*Vista volunteer with the Homeless Coalition of Hillsborough County. "She's even got a dress."

Both got cleaned up, got haircuts and nails done and Neville, too, got a new outfit for the big event.
Following the ceremony, Portamento of Hope Café will host a small reception for the couple.

"We've just put it off for 14 years," Nevile said.

And by legally marrying, the couple can apply for programs that can help them get housing together, Crocker said. "A lot of the programs won't allow you to file for one place unless you are legally married," she explained.

"Homelessness really does have a face," Crocker said. It's not always like Hollywood has portrayed it - a bum lying on a piece of cardboard with a bottle of booze in his hand, she said.

"Nobody woke up one day and said, 'I want to be homeless.' They have feelings and hopes and dreams just like everyone else," said Crocker, whose job as a volunteer is to change the image people have of the homeless. "And they fall in love just like everyone else."

Schrack and Neville had a mobile home in Seffner until they got evicted with only a few days notice when the landlord failed to pay his property taxes. Nevile lost his job as an air conditioning mechanic, he said, and with the economy, the day labor jobs, too, dried up.

"It's hard to save up money with all that's going on," Neville said.

But, for today at least, they are putting their cares aside.

"She's really excited," he said of Schrack. "It's really fantastic. It's taking a while to dawn on me."

Reporter Yvette C. Hammett can be reached at (813) 627-4763

http://www2.tbo.com/content/2010/mar/10/homeless-couple-weds-today/