MARLBORO, Mass. — A local wedding photographer was stabbed by a cousin of the bride during the wedding.
Donald Halsing is a wedding photographer, along with his fiancée, Ashley.
The pair were on the job, capturing the special moments of the day for a couple getting married in Raymond, Maine on May 23rd.
The wedding was held at the Kingsley Campground there.
“It was a very beautiful day the couple was excited, we were excited to work with them to capture their special moments throughout the day and everything was going really well until about 9 o’clock,” Halsing said.
Halsing says he was by the DJ booth when all of the sudden he was approached by a wedding guest, that turned out to be a cousin of the bride.
“I was on the dance floor in front of the DJ booth and it was really loud hard to hear anything and one of the guests walks up to me and he starts asking about our business, about our rates, which is a very normal thing to happen when I’m working,” he explained.
Halsing says he began to tell him the usual rates and tried to exchange more information via their cell phones.
“...and I thought he was reaching for his phone in his back pocket and instead he pulled out a pocket knife and stabbed me. It was a terrifying thing to happen,” he said.
“We plan for normal sorts of problems or injuries when we are photographing weddings, like ticks and mosquitoes, getting sore at the end of the day but this isn’t something you can prepare for. There was this hole in my chest right about where my liver is, that is where they found the lacerations,” he said.
Halsing, holding his chest, backed into the DJ booth.
“I started shouting for help. I actually backed up onto the stage where the DJ was...the stage was about two feet high, to get in front of him so he could see me and stop the music and get everything settled and call for help.”
The DJ called out to Halsing’s fiancée, Ashley, who was outside with the couple to take more photos.
“She thought she was just coming to help with a photo, and she had to see me up there screaming I’d been stabbed. Traumatizing for her as much as it is for me,” Halsing said.
“Right after he did it, I watched him in my peripheral vision, as I’m looking down, covering, getting pressure on the injury, I see him walking out of the barn over toward the lake which is where the police eventually found him. He was sitting over there.”
Police arrested 26-year-old Andrew Manderson. He’s since been charged with aggravated assault.
Halsing, who was stabbed in the chest, believes two things helped saved his life.
“One, is that the coordinator had pulled the cake cutting set off the cake cutting table. It’s right next to where this happened... five minutes before. A cake cutting knife is usually 12-15 inches long. It would have been a very different picture if he stabbed me with that for some reason. The other thing that actually went in our favor is that the bride is a nurse so many of the wedding guests and those in the wedding party were trained medical professionals,” he said.
“They got me sat down in a chair, got the wound packed up with napkins, I had a tablecloth wrapped around me. There were like five or six people sitting around me up on the stage making sure I was taken care of,” he added.
Now Halsing is looking at a long road to recovery.
“Beyond the physical recovery, which is probably going to take another month before I’m back to close to normal, there is the psychological side of it. There is the trauma of remembering it. When i lay down to go to bed sometimes, it plays in my head,” he said.
Because Halsing can’t lift anything over ten pounds, his fiancée has had to hire other second shooters for the weddings they have booked through the summer.
“I’m not going to be able to go out until 2027 to cover weddings and it’s a passion; it’s part of what keeps us healthy in our relationship, is working together and we get to see couples on their special day capture their special moments. It is meaningful for us and it is meaningful for them and to not be able to do that, is heartbreaking,” he said.
The couple’s own wedding is also coming up in September and now they are trying to cover the cost of medical bills too, which is why their friends and family have started a GoFundMe page.
Ashley also had to cancel her bridal shower, which was scheduled the day after the stabbing.
“She had to miss that special day. We are still having our wedding. It’s going to be a lovely September afternoon at Loon Mountain in New Hampshire. We’re looking forward to that. If people were going to cry before, they’re really going to cry now because I made it. We made it and we’re very happy to be here,” he said.
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