Visiting the Big House museum last August awakened feelings John Hickernell couldn’t shake.

The Ohio man, who grew up in the hub of rock ‘n’ roll near Cleveland, was a big fan of the Allman Brothers Band.

He and his fiancee, Karen Redman, strolled through the Tudor house that had been a real home to band members Berry Oakley, Duane Allman and their young families, and Gregg Allman. They moved in when the band’s star was beginning to rise and they felt they could shell out a few bucks for a larger place.

In that house, Hickernell could still feel the love shared so long ago.

“For me, it just took me back to another time,” he said. “They were really straight-forward musicians and left the political stuff to the other guys. They had a sense of family.”

Related: http://www.sheindressau.com/casual-wedding-dresses

Hickernell, 59, and Redman, 54, had been engaged for several years when they made their first trip to Macon.

They were mesmerized by the hold the Southern community had on the band in its early years — and throughout the rest of Gregg Allman’s life.

“Macon’s not what I’d call a small town,” Hickernell said. “But it’s small enough that to think that he was drawn back speaks volumes.”

The couple made plans to return in June to hear Gregg Allman in concert in his adopted hometown.

They bought six tickets to the Monday night show, June 5, and invited friends and family.

Over the internet, they booked rooms at the Burke Mansion bed and breakfast on Georgia Avenue, just a few blocks up from the Grand Opera House where Allman would perform.

“We’re spending so much on the room, we might as well make it our honeymoon and get married in Macon,” Redman suggested.

Why not get married at the Big House?

“You’ll never make that happen,” he said.

But she did.

Not only did she book the Big House for a June 4 wedding, she found officiant James Hamp online and lined up Two Chics Photography.

“We call them the Dixie Chics,” Hickernell joked.

Everything was all set for them to get married that Sunday, then go to the concert Monday night.

In March, Allman’s declining health forced cancellation of the tour.

The couple decided to go through with their plans and head south to Key West for a honeymoon.

The weekend before the wedding, Allman died at his home in Savannah.

They worried that the Big House might have to cancel the wedding, but thankfully, the funeral and private reception were scheduled for Saturday, the day before they planned to exchange vows under a towering tree in the yard.

Hickernell and Redman got to town just in time to join Gregg Allman’s funeral procession going into Rose Hill Cemetery.

“We were rushing,” he said. “We had to run down Riverside (Drive) in the heat.”

As the hearse carried one of his music idols to his final resting place, Redman heard him crying softly.

In the burial ground the band loved and featured in their music, the couple watched from a terrace above the graves of Duane Allman and Berry Oakley as family and friends paid their final respects.

“It was very moving,” Redman said.

“Is just broke your heart,” Hickernell said.

Duane Allman died when he was 24. The couple rode by the scene of his fatal motorcycle accident in Macon, as well as the place where Oakley met the same fate just over a year later.

“They stuck together, even through the tragedies,” Hickernell said.

That was part of his near lifelong attraction to that band of brothers. Hickernell knows what it’s like to bury band buddies.

A month ago, on the Sunday afternoon of their wedding, John and Karen hung on the tree pictures of those friends he lost with images of the couple’s other loved ones who couldn’t be there. They carefully wrapped twine around the trunk so as not to harm it.

A button bearing Gregg Allman’s likeness was pinned to Hickernell’s vest.

The night before their wedding, the venue was packed with mourners at a private reception for Allman’s family and close friends.

Flower arrangements of guitars and a mushroom lined the stage.

As the next generation of Allman Brothers Band members played, John and Karen met dozens of the estimated 5,000 people lining Vineville Avenue to hear the music.

No one really believed they were getting married at the Big House the next day, but one woman took them up on the invitation to join them.

She brought a bouquet of hydrangeas, which served as the bride’s “something blue.”

Maggie Johnson, director of marketing at the Allman Brothers Band at the Big House, couldn’t have been nicer, they said.

“This is just the way it was,” he said. “The hippie way.”

Daisies at their feet were in memory of their beloved dog, Daisy, who was always supposed to be a part of their wedding.

A storm blew in at the wrong time and forced the ceremony inside.

“I was pretty sure we’d get in one of those Farmers Insurance commercials if we didn’t,” she said.

In the glow of the stained glass mushroom adorning the museum’s entrance, the couple paid tribute to the Big House in their vows:

“Here in this place, The Big house, where Karen and John have chosen to be married, there is a lasting spirit that is a testament to a place in time of limitless boundaries of creativity and enthusiasm of youth. Brothers & sisters, husbands and wives, friends & advisers, who came together in this place; and then became family, bonded together for all time with love —- as proven by their perseverance to ascend hardship — as any family union would be braced to do. A bond of love and commitment of such that radiated outward and touched not only family & friends, but the world.”

Also see: http://www.sheindressau.com/princess-wedding-dresses-australia