One year ago, a couple got married in knee-deep water amid a powerful typhoon in the Philippines. The wedding photos quickly went viral as they revealed remarkable resilience in a warming world. The rain kept pouring as the wedding car inched through knee-deep floodwaters to the church.
It was 22 July 2025 and Typhoon Wipha was battering the Philippines with 130km/h (80mph) winds. Jamaica Aguilar already knew it was flooded at the historic Barasoain Church in Malolos, an hour north of Manila, where her wedding was to take place. “I remember praying and asking, please stop raining just for today so we can enjoy this,” Aguilar recalls, nearly a year later.
“And luckily, it stopped when I [stepped] outside the car.” The make-up staff had warned her there would news crews, but she had brushed them off, incredulous and nervous. Stepping out of the car, she spread the train of her dress outside the church, as the media lined up. “I was just nervous, and thinking to myself, this is it, this is the one,” said Aguilar.
“Although this is not how I planned it, there it is.” It’s love in the middle of a disaster – Aaron Favila Aaron Favila, a photojournalist with the Associated Press, captured the moment, and his photos immediately exploded online. In April 2026, he won a prestigious prize at the World Press Photo 2026 for the images. Fossil fuel emissions are driving up climate extremes.
In practice, what this means is that the scene captured by Favila is likely to become more common: a bride having to walk down the aisle barefoot and through floodwaters, while almost 10 million people in her country reel from the impact of a tropical storm. The Philippines has a long history of dealing with and managing floods, but climate change is now rigging the game. The night before Aguilar and her fiancé Jade Rick Verdillo had attended a mass at Barasoian Church on the eve of their wedding.
Halfway through, it started raining heavily. Floodwaters moved through the wooden benches, covering the church floor. “We were watching the news non-stop, and it was saying [the rain] might get heavier,” Verdillo says.
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