High school seniors Chase Smith and Sadie Mills, both 18, got married on April 29 in Sadie’s front yard. Before you rush to say these two are too young, know that their wedding was packed with heightened emotions for one huge reason: The two got married a few days after Chase was told he had three to five months to live.

Chase has been battling Ewing’s sarcoma, an ultra-rare and aggressive form of cancer, for the last six years. He and Sadie had been dating for six months before deciding to tie the knot.

Sadie said, “Overall, it was the best day of my life. I’ve always wanted an outdoor wedding and the fact that Chase came up with the idea to have the altar right where we went on our first date, where we had our first kiss, that meant a lot to me.”

Until Chase received this updated prognosis, the two had much different plans in mind.

Chase and Sadie originally planned to graduate high school and go to college together, and they hoped to continue their swimming and diving careers. They also planned to get married, but much further down the road. However, Chase’s new prognosis cast a sense of urgency over all of their plans, and getting married now made the most sense to them.

This March, Chase learned that his cancer had returned, and this time there was just too much of it. Chase found out that he has tumors all over his body, and that even with more treatment, the odds are no longer in his favor. So he and Sadie made a choice, and it’s one they’re really happy with.

Chase told People, “We definitely were thinking about getting married in the future and we knew we wanted to. A lot of people do say, ‘Oh they’re getting married because he has a potential to pass away soon,’ and that’s not at all why we decided to get married. It was more of just a wake-up call that, ‘Hey, God wants you two together.'”

Sadie said that it was just meant to be: “What was cool about that was whenever we were first talking about getting married, Chase brought it up and I already knew what he was gonna say. So I interrupted him and said, ‘No, I know the same thing.’ So that was definitely a God thing that the time was right.”

Over the next four days, Sadie and Chase told their parents about their plans and then went on to plan out the entire wedding. Sadie’s parents were especially supportive. “I have the best two parents I could possibly have,” she said. “For them to be a hundred percent behind me and my choices and my decisions on who I love and who I wanted to marry when I wanted to marry, it couldn’t mean any more to me than what it did.”