U.S. Rep. Steve King (R-Kiron) made a significant sacrifice to cast his vote against the Democrats’ health care reform package, which passed by only a handful of votes Saturday night in Washington, D.C.

He skipped his son’s wedding.

As the Sioux City Journal’s Bret Hayworth reports:

“It was not a hard decision for me to decide then that I had to be in Washington, if that was the time the vote was coming up. But it was still hard, if you know what I mean,” King said.

The reaction in the room?

“No one in this family asked me to reconsider. They all said, ‘We know that you will do what you have to do,’” King said. “So I call it full-family support and full understanding. As I said, the best thing that I could give them would be to preserve the freedom that I was born into and be able to pass that along to any children that they will be blessed with.”