Couple celebrates Valentine’s Day wedding at Modesto chapel

Jorge Galvan and Ericka Umanzor showed up alone to Janet’s Flowers and Wedding Chapel for their Valentine’s Day nuptials Sunday.

It was a rare daytime moment together for the couple, who between them have 19 children. Yup, 19.

“We do go out sometimes at night,” Umanzor, 33, said just before she became Mrs. Galvan. “Usually for grocery shopping.”

Both bride and groom work long hours – she as a nurse in San Leandro, he for a company that does detailing for car dealerships in Livermore.

They took a moment for themselves Sunday to pledge their lives together in the courtyard of the downtown Modesto wedding venue.

In addition to being a day dedicated to romance, the date also has special resonance for the couple, as Sunday was the first anniversary of their first date.

There almost wasn’t a second one.

“I told him I have 11 kids,” she said. “I had to spell it out for him. Then he said, ‘Guess what? I have eight.’ ”

Umanzor, whose children include twins and triplets, said it took some convincing for her to go out with Galvan again.

“I thought he was kidding about the kids,” she said, laughing.

For his part, Galvan, 36, wasn’t about to let Umanzor go. He said he was smitten almost immediately.

“I had been traveling everywhere,” he said. “I found her here (in Modesto).”

Galvan and Umanzor weren’t sure what they would find when they showed up at the chapel. They thought they might be part of an assembly-line ceremony, one of several couples getting married. Instead, they had the courtyard to themselves.

“Now I wish we would have brought the kids,” Umanzor said.

Living with 17 children – two of Galvan’s live with his former wife – might be complicated, but the couple said they make it work. And all of the children, who range in age from 2 to 17 1/2 , get along.

“They’re good kids,” Umanzor said. They would like to have one more, a child together. The couple was pregnant with a little girl, but miscarried a few weeks ago. Galvan said they considered postponing the wedding, but ultimately decided to keep the original date.

In addition to the wedding, the couple is celebrating a move into a new house in Stockton (seven bedrooms, 4 1/2 baths). They bought the house after renting two homes on the same street for the past several months.

“It’s like living in a zoo,” Umanzor said. Asked if they would have it any other way, the response from the couple was immediate and identical:

“No.”

This story was originally published February 14, 2016 at 4:43 PM with the headline "Couple celebrates Valentine’s Day wedding at Modesto chapel."