The profound grief over their stillborn son persists, but the fates seem to have finally shed a little sunshine on engaged Seabees Jamie Vilmur and Phil Yancey.

Vilmur, 28, and Yancey, 22, are preparing for a March 16 dream wedding, compliments of a local radio station and various area businesses.

"Honestly we were both wondering if we would have to put the wedding ceremony off for awhile; we were just not sure we could afford the headstone for our son and the wedding," Vilmur said. "His headstone has to be right — if there really can be a right. Nothing about him has gone right."

It has been a year of extremes for the Oxnard couple. It began with Yancey's deployment to Iraq, followed by the stillbirth of their son in April. In July, Vilmur entered and won the wedding contest and, in October, Yancey returned from Iraq and surprised Vilmur by dropping to one knee on the airport tarmac and giving her a proper proposal.

After traveling to Texas to see Yancey's extended family this holiday season, the couple will immerse themselves in the final details of the spring wedding that they hope will usher in brighter days.

"I want our wedding day to be as beautiful in life as it has been in our dreams," Vilmur said, "so that we can spend our time together looking to the future and learning to heal."

Love story

Vilmur and Yancey met in October 2004 in Rota, Spain, where both were stationed. Vilmur, who had enlisted in the Navy Seabees in 2001, is a storekeeper second class. Yancey, a 2004 enlistee, is a builder third class.

Vilmur met Yancey when he came in search of a new hard hat at the supply area, which Vilmur ran. Vilmur made a note of how good-looking she thought he was. So, when she spotted him a few days later at a local lounge, a shy Vilmur asked a friend to play matchmaker for her.

"Pretty much what I said to her was: He's hot. Go talk to him for me,'" Vilmur said.

The accommodating friend introduced them, and the two hit it off immediately. They wound up talking until 2:30 a.m.

"Right there, we were good friends," Yancey said.

At the time, Yancey was dating someone else, but even after he and his girlfriend broke up shortly afterward, neither he nor Vilmur tried to take the friendship to the next level.

"Our friends were basically taking bets on how long it would take for one of us to make a move," Vilmur said. "A month after we met and started talking, he did. We officially started dating."

The two dated for 10 months, then returned to Naval Air Station Point Mugu.

Shortly after returning, they broke up.

"We were still good together," Yancey said. "We were close and loved each other. But things were changing. I was still in my young going out and partying' thing. She's always been the more at home' type."

Vilmur was older, so she knew Yancey was at a different place in his life than she was. Plus, she was being transferred to Japan and he was off to Texas, and then Iraq, so there was geography to consider.

"I always loved him but I think that neither of us was ready then to make this big of a commitment, especially long distance," Vilmur said.

In July 2006, both were transferred back to Point Mugu.

They started seeing each other again, but as friends rather than lovers — until one night when the feelings neither wanted to admit carried them away.

"I actually invited him over to watch a movie and, well, it was a little bit more than a movie," Vilmur said.

A surprise and a sonogram

That night was the only time they had been intimate since their breakup, but one night was all it took. When Vilmur went in for minor gynecological surgery last November, she learned she was pregnant.

On Nov. 9, 2006, she gave Yancey the news, along with a sonogram of a seven-week-old fetus.

"I showed him the sonogram picture of who we now know as our son but then was just a little circle on the page," Vilmur said. "My mom and I had just seen his heartbeat that day."

Vilmur, who says she talks nonstop when she gets nervous, kept talking as Yancey continued to gaze at the little circle.

"The first thing Phil said when he could get a word in edgewise was, Do you want to get married?'" Vilmur said.

Yancey said he proposed because he wanted "to make it clear, if I hadn't in the past two years, that I still loved her and wanted to be with her," he said.

But Vilmur, who describes herself as "a bit stubborn," thought Yancey was just trying to "do the right thing," and she didn't want him to feel trapped. She declined his proposal.

"I was scared now with the what-ifs,'" she said. "At least we were friends, but what if we got together and it didn't work? We then have a baby and we can't stand each other."

They hadn't yet decided on marriage, but finally, in January, Vilmur responded to Yancey's romantic overtures, and they were once again a couple.

Yancey was overwhelmed. At 21, he was headed for his second tour of Iraq, was about to become a father and was rekindling a relationship.

"I was definitely happy about it, but I was also scared at the same time," he said.

The darkest moment

The pregnancy went well for a while. Vilmur had only about a week of morning sickness. Through Internet communication, she let Yancey know the baby was a boy. They decided to name him Riley.

Riley slept and kicked and hiccuped. Vilmur, who never liked chocolate, could now not get enough.

"I had to have a piece every single day," she said. "Riley loved chocolate."

An amniocentesis revealed that everything was fine. Riley was very active, waking his mom up almost every night with his in utero gymnastics.

Then, on April 18, less than two months before Riley was due, Vilmur began to bleed. She went to the hospital, where she was examined and medicated and was told to go home and rest, she said.

"Saturday and Sunday, I did notice Riley wasn't as active, but nothing alarming," Vilmur said. "I thought he was reacting to my nerves and I just tried to relax."

But on Monday night, she became concerned.

"I thought: Wait. When was the last time you really felt Riley kick? Lunch? No.' I had to have felt him, but I couldn't be sure," she said.

She tried to sleep, waking several times. Had it been Riley's kick that woke her? Or not? She couldn't be sure. On Tuesday, the 23rd, she called her doctor. Riley wasn't moving. Her doctor sent her to the hospital and she was hooked up to an ultrasound machine.

"The nurses tried to find Riley's heartbeat with two monitors," Vilmur said.

Her own heart was beating so fast, the nurses were having trouble discerning the baby's heartbeat from hers. Vilmur tried to calm herself, but she was terrified.

The doctor arrived. There was still no reassuring "whoosh, whoosh" of a heartbeat. Vilmur still remembers the strain on the doctor's face when he gave her the news: Riley had died.

"He died where he should have been the safest. A blood clot had developed in the umbilical cord and he was gone that quick," Vilmur said, tears spilling onto her cheeks at the memory.

Later that day, her labor started. At 11:53 p.m. on April 24, 2007, Riley Alva Yancey was stillborn. He was 2 pounds, 15 ounces.

Bad news in Iraq

Through military channels, Yancey got the awful news in Iraq. He said one of his superiors sat him down and told him succinctly:

"Your girl lost the baby."

Yancey felt as if someone had socked him in the stomach. He couldn't move.

"I remember yelling NO!' really loud," Yancey said. "I was angry and devastated at the same time. I've never been that sad in my life."

Yancey got up and wandered, walked, finally pounding a shower trailer, hard.

"I was so ecstatic at being a dad. And then it was gone. Just like that," Yancey said.

That night, Yancey called his dad and cried as he hadn't cried since he was a boy.

Yancey and Vilmur were finally able to talk on the phone and to cry and grieve together. A few days later, Yancey was given special leave to return home and help Vilmur find a tiny casket, and mourn a life that never began.

"Because our son didn't grow anymore inside of me doesn't make him any less of a person, any less real, any less deserving, any less loved," Vilmur said.

Bearing the grief together forged their relationship in a way neither could have predicted.

"It is said that loss will either tear you apart or bring you together," Vilmur said.

In their case, it made them realize how much they loved each other.

After their son's funeral, Yancey returned to Iraq to complete his deployment. They began discussing marriage through e-mail and instant messaging. They joke about whether or not her proposal came over the Internet. He swears he didn't propose with an instant message. She swears he did.

"He said, Do you think Christmas is too early to get married?' is what he typed out," she said. "I thought, Oh no, he is not proposing to me on the Internet!'"

Yancey made the point moot on Oct. 10, when he finally arrived home from Iraq.

Coming home

Vilmur stood on Point Mugu's flight line in new pumps and a dress she had carefully picked out the week before. She was surrounded by other spouses who had spent months waiting for deployed loved ones to return.

Grief had robbed Vilmur's 5-foot, 7-inch frame of 40 pounds. Her friend, Tasha Myers, rubbed Vilmur's back now and then as Vilmur clasped and unclasped her hands. She applied lipstick. Checked the time on her cell phone. Applied lipstick again. Her eyes continually scanned the horizon for the plane.

"I'm trying not to cry," she said. "I'll cry after he sees me."

Finally, the mammoth transport plane touched down to a roar of cheers and clapping. The doors opened, and khaki-clad Seabees spilled out like sand. Vilmur craned her neck as other soldiers flung their arms around spouses and children.

Finally she saw him, striding toward her, and the tears sprang into her eyes. They gripped each other in a fierce embrace and kissed; then Yancey gently pulled away and dropped to one knee.

He reached into his jacket and pulled out a ring.

"Will you marry me?" he asked.

Yancey already had his answer, and Vilmur finally had her proper proposal.

The contest

The one-knee proposal may have come in October, but the wedding plans were well under way.

Vilmur selected her wedding dress in June. In July, she heard KHAY morning deejays Jon Cowsill and Charlye Parker announce a contest for a free wedding at Ventura's Pierpont Inn. The wedding would come with a number of perks, such as a reception, photography, a honeymoon suite and an ice sculpture. The whole package was worth about $8,500 — something Vilmur and Yancey never could have afforded, especially because they needed a headstone for Riley.

As directed, Vilmur entered a 107-word essay about her journey with the man she would marry and the son they would never raise.

She struggled with whether to include Riley in her story.

"It was never my intent to be chosen because someone felt sorry for us," Vilmur said. "I don't think we deserve this because we lost Riley; however, this is my life, our life now. How could I not mention him?"

Cowsill and Parker said Vilmur's letter stood out among the roughly 100 entries they received partially because it was so heartfelt.

"I remember her sincerity and the plight that she was going through and how much she really wanted that dream wedding," Cowsill said. "I could feel it, that as a little girl she wanted to have that perfect dream wedding and she just couldn't afford it."

"Also, she wanted to do this for him (Yancey)," Parker said, "to keep his mind off of what was going on with the baby. It was important to her to begin to heal."

Vilmur said she and her mother were listening to the radio the day Parker and Cowsill announced she had won. After some squealing and leaping around the living room, she called in.

"She was so excited and screaming and crying," Cowsill said. "I remember a lot of tears, happy tears."

Vilmur said the only thing that could make their wedding day more perfect is if their son were alive to share it. But she takes comfort in the fact that she and Yancey will always have each other.

"I couldn't and wouldn't ever want to imagine a life without Phil," she said. "He is truly my rock and the only person who could make me want to believe in and hope for the future."