GIRL WITH AUTISM MISTOOK A BRIDE FOR CINDERELLA
A 5-year-old girl with autism who loves Disney princesses mistook the bride at a park photo shoot for Cinderella and ran straight at her with open arms. The bride, Olivia Spark, was in the middle of her wedding photos in Akron, New York, on October 13, 2018, and she happily played along.
Layla Lester was at Akron Falls Park with her mother, Jessica, when she spotted Spark posing with her new husband. According to WPTV, Layla did not hesitate.
“She just goes running over, arms wide open, [yelling] ‘Cinderella, Cinderella!'” Jessica told the station.
For Layla, that was a big move. Jessica said her daughter is vibrant and social, but her autism can make it hard to know how to interact with strangers. A princess, though, is not a stranger. “When she sees a princess, she’s going to love them because she loves princesses,” Jessica said.
Spark stopped the shoot to talk with her. Her new husband, identified by WKBW as Caleb, was there too. Jessica said Spark “was just so sweet with her and just kept talking to her and asking her questions,” and that Layla “fell in love so fast.”
Spark, a heavy-equipment operator from western New York, according to a CBS News follow-up, was just as moved. “I was flattered. I was like in tears that she thought I was a princess, and it just made my day absolutely more amazing than what it already was,” she told WPTV. She told CBS News she was “more than happy to be Cinderella for that little girl.”
The photographer who kept shooting
Wedding and wildlife photographer Nicole Wickins was there to shoot the wedding, not a surprise royal audience. She told Boston 25 News she wasn’t sure at first whether to take pictures of a child none of them knew.
“I was really caught off-guard because there’s a little girl that none of us had known, so I wasn’t sure if I should take pictures. But it kind of just felt like the thing to do,” she said.
Eventually the bride had a schedule to keep. “Well, we’re going to the ball now,” Spark told Layla in a video taken that day. Layla had the perfect reply: “Bye! Have fun at the ball!”
Jessica had high praise for the woman her daughter had just met. “She is the epitome of what a real life princess would be. She’s kind and she’s sweet and she went out of her way to be nice to Layla,” she said.
The fairy tale kept going
It did not end at the park. After the wedding, Spark’s family posted on Facebook to find Layla’s family and share the photos, and the post spread quickly. Spark and Layla were soon reunited, and Spark brought gifts, WPTV reported. Layla, the station said, still called her Cinderella.
CBS News reported that about a week after the wedding, Spark received her wedding pictures and arranged to meet Layla and Jessica. Wickins photographed the two of them together in a replica Cinderella pumpkin carriage.
On October 26, 2018, KXLF reported that the two kept seeing each other often, and that Spark had even visited Layla in her wedding dress. “It’s an instant bond. They love each other. It’s cute,” Jessica told CBS News.
A GoFundMe campaign was also launched to send Layla’s family to Walt Disney World so she could meet her favorite princesses, as Boston 25 News reported. By December 28, 2018, CBS News reported that Spark and Layla were still seeing each other regularly, and that the family had made the trip. At Disney World, Layla met another princess named Cinderella.
