Man's Dance With His Son's Widow At Her 2nd Wedding Touches Hearts

NORTH FORK, NY — Mary Latham has photographed scores of weddings. But the images she took at recent nuptials in Aquebogue will be forever etched onto her heart.

"In 12 years of photographing weddings, I’ve never experienced something as beautiful as last night," Latham wrote after the Feb. 24 wedding of Tara Tandy and Joseph D'Esposito at The Vineyards at Aquebogue.

"My bride, Tara, tragically lost her first husband, Joe Tandy, in 2016," Latham wrote. He was just 29 years old.

Tara and Joe met in high school, started dating in college, and deployed to Afghanistan together in 2012. In 2013, they returned to Mattituck and served as full-time technicians at the 106th Rescue Wing in Westhampton Beach. Both came from military families with long records of giving back.

The military couple won a dream ceremony through Peconic Landing's "Veterans Day Wedding Giveback" in 2012.

Four years after Joe died, Tara returned overseas to serve in Africa, where she met another Joe, Latham explained.

"Someone who accepted her history, would go with her to visit her late husband’s grave, and made Tara smile again," she said.

D'Esposito not only asked Tara’s father for permission when he wanted to ask Tara to marry him, he asked her first father-in-law, Jack Tandy, too, Latham wrote.

"Yesterday I photographed their wedding. And when it was time for the father-daughter dance, Jack Tandy brought her to the dance floor. And at the very end of the dance, while tears were pouring down my face behind the lens, he waved on Tara’s new husband to the floor and grabbed them all into a hug," Latham said. "It was perhaps the most beautiful thing I’ve witnessed to date in my photography career."

On her Facebook page, Tara expressed the gratitude she and Joe have, after "the outpouring of love and support," they have received.

The newlyweds thanked their parents; Tara thanked the D’Esposito family for welcoming her so warmly into their family.

And, she added, "A heartfelt thank you to the Tandy family, for gracefully accepting Joe into your family."