BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe – A 25-year-old woman was determined to get married on her planned wedding date – despite having her arm ripped off by a crocodile days earlier, the BBC reports.

Zanele Ndlovu, 25, and her now-husband Jamie Fox, 27, were paddling on the Zambezi River five days before their planned wedding date.

A crocodile leaped out of the river and bit Ndlovu and the canoe, sending the couple into the river.

Once they were in the water, the crocodile clamped down on Ndlovu’s arm, pulling her down under the water.

“My first thought was, ‘I am going to die.’ The water was now bloody,” she told the BBC. “But then, after a while, I thought, ‘No, let me just fight.’ I just kind of hung in there until the tour guides were able to save me and get me onto their canoe.”

Ndlovu was airlifted to a hospital in Bulawayo. There, after Ndlovu was operated on, thoughts returned to the wedding.

“We had always planned for our wedding to be on May 5.” Fox said.

The hospital doctors wanted to continue monitoring Ndlovu’s progress, but said they could hold the wedding at the hospital’s chapel.

Despite not being able to have as many guests as originally planned, the couple went ahead with the wedding on their planned date.

“Life is unpredictable,” Ndlovu said. “You know when they say, ‘When you make plans, God laughs.’ That makes so much more sense to me now.”