Community bakes for Pittsburgh-area bride's cookie table after mom's cancer diagnosis

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) -- While it may be every girl's dream to get married, it's every Pittsburgh mom's dream to give that daughter a cookie table. But that dream hit a snag for a Washington County family when mom Donna Otto got sick.

Her daughter is getting married Saturday, and with Donna too ill to bake, her friends turned to Facebook for help, and the community showed up Friday in droves.

Like any Pittsburgh mom, Donna wants to have a cookie table at the reception. But six months ago, she was diagnosed with cancer, and baking is just too much.

"What I went through was very unexpected and how the community, my church community, my family community and now all these people that I found out I do know some of them and some of them I don't know," she said. 

Her friends stepped up and created a Facebook post asking for cookies for the infamous Pittsburgh wedding cookie table.

"Our leader of the wedding cookie table put a post out asking for help, so we have a lot of people. I'm kind of afraid to see how many cookies we'll have inside this door today," said The Wedding Cookie Table Community Facebook page organizer Bernadette Deutsch.

The response was incredible.

"We were going through a very difficult time. God just never left us and people rallied around us, prayer, and now the cookies and cakes. People just want to do stuff for my daughter and my wife and it's such a blessing to have that," said dad Jim Otto. 

Many of the people dropping off cookies and monetary donations Friday never met Donna or anyone from the Otto family.

"The generous hearts of them just wanting to reach out to touch a life, and I'm overwhelmed, I feel so blessed," she said. 

Deutsch said she wasn't surprised by the outpouring of support.

"If it's what we can do with our cookies and our time and talents, we're there. It's a good thing to do," she said. 

Cookies are still arriving and are being delivered from different states by strangers who saw the post for the wedding.

"Not only the cookies, but people have just blessed us throughout these six months with cards, with gifts, with meals," Jim said. 

When asked what to do with all the leftover cookies, Donna said she will either freeze them or donate them to her church.