Got 50 spare rooms? Morristown couple needs you, ASAP!

Picture this:

Your wedding is three days away.

The church is not available because roads are closed.

There is no power, and no generator, at the banquet hall.

Friends and relatives from across the country want to know if they should come…because local airports have been closed…there is no gas for cars…and the wedding hotel has shut down.

You can’t answer them because your cell phone and laptop died when your apartment went dark.

All because of a wedding crasher named Sandy.

This is no Owen Wilson farce. Meet Lisa Short and Andrew DeLiso of Morristown.

“It was not a good afternoon,” said Lisa, 32, sipping tea Wednesday night at Café on the Green. She appeared remarkably calm for someone who had spent frantic hours in the seniors center at town hall, recharging electronics and trying to reprogram her special day.

Appearances can be deceiving.

“She hasn’t killed anyone yet,” deadpanned Andrew, 33. He is an engineer for an elevator company in Moonachie, a town flooded this week by Hurricane Sandy.  You could say he is going with the flow; Lisa can’t quite fathom that.

“I can back away from it, emotionally,” Andrew explained. “I can’t get upset with Mother Nature. She’s going to win. That’s the problem with being an engineer. Everything’s logical.”

‘LOTS OF ICE’

Lisa approached the wedding very logically when Andrew proposed back in February. A fall ceremony would be preferable, weather-wise, to winter nuptials, she reasoned. Still, with Tropical Storm Irene and the October 2011 Nor-easter seared into her memory, she grilled every banquet hall manager about “Plan B.”

“Every vendor told us they had a backup plan, with a generator, and [the reception] would happen. Until today,” said Lisa, who works in quality assurance for a pharma company.

Turns out the country club they had hired lost power in Monday’s hurricane and never got around to getting a generator as promised.

“There was no Plan B,” Lisa said.

She has identified a couple of reception halls that might come to the rescue; one just had a cancellation. Okay, so the place has no electricity. “But they say they have lots of ice,” Lisa said.

Well meaning friends have tried to cheer her with dark tales: “Weddings without power are so much fun!”

‘LOCKDOWN MODE’

The church posed another giant challenge. Lisa had booked one in Perth Amboy, now in “lockdown mode” thanks to that Sandy character.  Any old church won’t do for Lisa, who is Carpatho-Rusyn Orthodox. Miracle of miracles, her family found another such church in Rockaway, with an opening on Saturday.

Lisa raced through her punchlist.  Gown? Check!  The bridal shop has a generator. Deejay’s got one, too. The photographer lacks electricity, but has batteries. The florist insists she can do arrangements in the dark. The limo driver swears he has a full tank of gas. Check, check, check. Honeymoon…later.

That just leaves the question of where to lodge 50 guests who will start arriving on Thursday from Arizona, California, Maryland, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas and south Jersey. Every hotel in the state, it seems, is crammed with refugees from Hurricane Sandy. Or has no power, like the hotel where the wedding party has reservations.

“Should I bring camping gear?” asked Andrew’s brother from North Carolina.

It’s coming down to the wire.

“We need a block of rooms,” said Lisa.

“We have to nail it down really quickly,” said Andrew.

Embodying the resilient spirit that Gov. Christie keeps touting in the wake of New Jersey’s worst natural disaster, Lisa put on a brave face.

“I think things are going to work out,” she said. “We’ve just got to find hotel rooms.”

Andrew, logically, rubbed his stubbly chin. He would settle for an electric shave.