Usually, the bride is the star of the wedding. Not this time.

Andre Pearson, of Nebraska, underwent a risky, and ultimately successful, heart transplant that enabled him to make it to his daughter's wedding in Indio, Calif.

Pearson needed a heart transplant and has failing kidneys. Doctors said he only had a few months to live, but he said he was determined to make it to his little girl's big day:

Not to be able to even stand up and say, 'I am the one that will give her away'...I felt that I was letting her down."

Doctors at Minnesota's Mayo Clinic spring into action and performed a procedure they had never done by "implanting a left and right ventricular assist device to help Pearson's heart pump."

The surgery worked and Pearson made the trip west to surprise his daughter the night before her wedding, leaving her in tears. At the wedding, Pearson, in a wheelchair, accompanied his daughter down the aisle.

Safe to say it was a day no one will ever forget.

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