Houston Woman Plans To Marry Her Med-School Diploma

Graduating from a medical program is a fine achievement, and anyone doing so should be proud. But marrying your medical-degree diploma? That's exactly what one Houston woman plans to do, and she's planned a "graduwedding" complete with a dress and bouquet toss. She even plans to feed her diploma a piece of wedding cake.

"For anyone who thinks the graduwedding idea is nuts, I say of course it is." Angie Hamouie, 27 told Cosmopolitan. "I shouldn't have to pretend I'm marrying a piece of paper to convince folks that this achievement is a big deal. The goal of the graduwedding is to make people pause to think why we don't celebrate graduations as big as weddings, even though they represent so much."

Come May 13, the day she graduates, Hamouie and her friends and family will gather — venue to be determined — and celebrate the happy couple. "The festivities will be oddly similar to a traditional matrimonial ceremony," Hamouie said. She plans "to enter with my framed degree by my side. We will have a first dance and sit together at the front of the room. I also plan to feed it cake. After all the dancing, I'll toss a bouquet. But the person who catches it won't be next to get married, they'll be next to graduate!"

Hamouie lives in Houston, and will after her graduwedding head to Washington, D.C., to begin an ob-gyn residency at Georgetown. She said that the idea of the graduwedding came to her in 2016, on the day she learned she'd gotten into her top-choice school. Graduating from med school, she thought, was just as important as getting married.

"I worried that folks wouldn't take my party seriously because it was 'only' a graduation," Hamouie remembered thinking. So she bought a "beautiful ivory dress that just exuded the Graduwedding feel … From that moment I knew everything surrounding this party would have to be so extra and ridiculous. So the first thing I did when we came back to Texas was ask another friend, who was also thrilled with the idea, to take 'Enmatchment' photos in Galveston.”

Hamouie has set up a wedding website — click here to see all the photos and learn about the details of the graduwedding — and if you were thinking of sending a gift to the newlyweds, don't do it: Hamouie has requested that you donate to charities that work to improve the educational opportunities of children.

— Image: Angie Hamouie (Zainab Ghwari/The Knot)