CHICAGO — As Dayleen Marrero walked through what was once a hallway to her West Town apartment on a recent Wednesday, she pointed through a hole in the drywall to a soaked kitchen, a muddy living room and a charred bedroom upstairs exposed to the sky.

“Oh, it’s my house,” she said wryly.

Marrero, 27, had been preparing for her evening wedding at a hotel the previous Friday when a fire sparked at 128 N. Campbell Ave., where she and her fiancé had lived for two years. Her now-husband, Andrew Taylor, 28, escaped the smoke-filled building with his tuxedo in hand and their pit bull mix.

The pair got married that evening just the same, with a few tears, but also with the support of their family and friends. They have been honeymooning on a friend’s couch bed ever since.

The two-story, brick mixed-use building caught fire because of an electrical accident believed to have been started between the ceiling and the roof, according to Chicago Fire Department Deputy District Chief Jeff Lyle. Six units were on the top floor, Lyle said.

Marrero and Taylor said most of the tenants, including their groomsmen, worked as independent artists like themselves.

“When I saw the place for the first time, just looking at it from the outside was very painful,” Marrero said. “I cried a lot. I go through periods of feeling super numb and super strange to being super emotional and sad.”

On that Wednesday afternoon, they went back to the building, hoping to recover some of the equipment she uses as an aerial acrobat and dancer and that he uses as a painter, actor and musician.

The wedding rings had been recovered the day before, but her dance costumes were scorched along with their bedroom. His black electric guitar lay soaked in their living room, and a red silk that once hung from the ceiling was smashed between pieces of wood and drywall on top of a mattress in the living room where his best man had been sleeping as a houseguest.

“I just painted this,” Taylor said while lifting a soggy canvas in the living room. “I didn’t like it anyway.”

From that room they could see their groomsmen’s apartment, where covered by a white blanket under a piano lay their dog, Ruby. Taylor started to search for the cat, Tanuki, but then quickly turned back into his own apartment. He couldn’t bring himself to sift through the wreckage, he told Marrero later.

“It looks like the trash compactor scene in ‘Star Wars,’” Taylor said. “Everything’s ruined.”

The two walked out after a few minutes, leaving everything in the muck but a few pieces of jewelry and a record that they figured could still work. Taylor said he found his journals ruined in a puddle.

All of the wedding guests, including her family from Puerto Rico and his from Cincinnati, have returned to their normal lives, but since stories ran over the weekend about the bizarre sequence of their wedding day events, the couple have continued to be overwhelmed by the support of friends and strangers.

Almost $20,000 has been raised on a GoFundMe page set up by a friend, and dozens of readers have emailed offers to donate furniture, money and temporary stays in their empty apartments. One man even offered them a round-trip ticket for a honeymoon, which they’re not sure if they should take.

“It’s amazing,” Marrero said. “I have my faith in humanity restored because of all the help people have been giving us.”

The couple are more concerned about some of their neighbors. Mike Kloss showed up at the building shortly after Marrero and Taylor on that Wednesday, hoping to find old photos and some of the eight years’ worth of artwork he left behind.

“I’m not expecting much,” Kloss, 37, said.

Another neighbor, Erik Voit, 30, has raised about $2,200 on a GoFundMe page, but said it is far short of the $50,000 worth of equipment he estimates he lost when his recording studio went up in flames.

To sustain them for now, a relief check from their renters insurance is in the mail, Marrero said, and the restaurant where she works has offered them an empty one-bedroom apartment with a mattress. Over the next few days, they plan to rebuild, find a routine and maybe actually get out of town.

“And keep in mind the things that are important in life,” Taylor said. “We don’t have any things, and honestly, I guess we don’t need them.”

As for Marrero’s overall assessment of married life so far?

“Crazy,” she said.