Story of a COVID Bride, Part 2: Before the Pandemic
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Even before COVID came, our let’s-plan-a-wedding experience was kinda crazy.
I, for one, had been dreaming about my wedding for years. Dreaming about my future spouse and the life we were to live together, yes–and also about those other things. The dress, the venue, the food, the dessert, and most important of all: the guests. The family and the friends. Those who would stand with us and encourage us, who would travel near and far to be with us, who would take photos of us and fawn over our outfits and our love, who would assure us with their words and their actions that, simply by their presence, we are cherished, we are supported, we are known, we are loved.
Once my now-husband and I were on the path to marriage, we began dreaming together. Who we’d ask to be our groomsmen and bridesmaids. The color scheme we wanted. The music we’d include in the ceremony. What sort of dessert we’d choose for the reception. Where we’d go for our honeymoon.
Unfortunately and unexpectedly, this dreaming did not last long (without being tinged with worry and uncertainty, anyways).
We got engaged in December of 2019, shortly before Christmas. In January, we started making plans–setting a date, writing a guest list, designing save-the-dates, researching venues. We both lived in Massachusetts, while all of our family and most of our friends lived out-of-state or out-of-country, so the mere thought of gathering everyone together to celebrate was a dream-come-true. What other time in our lives would we be able to have all those we loved in one place?
Choosing a date was actually quite the challenge for us–and something we were to become very familiar with over the coming months. My now-husband and I both worked for the same non-profit, and finding a date that didn’t conflict with our work, that wasn’t a holiday, and that allowed for the least amount of scheduling conflicts for family and friends was tough.
Early in January, we decided on June 27th.
Fast-forward a couple more weeks, and due to unexpected financial complications and our work schedule, we made the decision to move the wedding to August 29th. Thankfully, we hadn’t sent out save-the-dates yet, so damage control was really just limited to immediate family and very close friends.
Funnily enough, I remember being devastated that we had to wait a mere two more months to get married after changing our date the first time. There were many tears. Ha. Cute. Just you wait, buttercup. It’s about to be a bumpy ride.
So. In late January, we decided August 29th, 2020. Okay.
Come February, I began to start shopping for a wedding dress. This was something I’d been looking forward to for as long as I can remember (as a visual artist, I consider clothing and style to be an art itself). After two appointments and countless try-ons, I found the dress I wanted to wear walking toward my beloved on our wedding day. It was just what I had dreamt of: ivory and white, lots of lace, A-line, and not poofy, with small flower embellishments and a lovely train. I imagined that I’d wear a leaf-and-flower crown and some sort of elegant-but-woodsy belt. In case you haven’t caught on yet, I love nature, and apparently was going for an Elven Forest Queen look. And yes, for those of you wondering: I did cry :)
Now, this is where the crazy part starts.
At the end of February/beginning of March, my now-husband and I were praying about our wedding, and God made it clear that we should postpone it. Again.
Now, listen here: Both of us love Jesus. Both of us talk with God about everything in our lives, and He gives us wisdom, direction, and love on the daily. He’s told both of us, both together and individually way before we even met, some pretty crazy things that we didn’t understand at the time, but that we did anyways because we trusted Him. And never, not even once, has He proven Himself to be untrustworthy. I could write so many pages about doing life alongside Jesus (and I probably will one day), but for now suffice it to say that, because He has always been trustworthy and always known more than we have in the past, we trusted Him when He encouraged us to postpone August 29th.
Keep in mind that this was just a couple of weeks before Massachusetts went into lockdown because of COVID-19. It was just a couple of weeks before life in the United States was completely turned on its head. It was just a couple of weeks before “corona,” “mask,” “six feet,” “quarantine,” and “social distance” were even parts of our vernacular.
But, we believed God.
So, we postponed our wedding. For the second time.
But this time, we didn’t know when the new date would be. From a human standpoint, we figured that we should wait about a year, because that would give us enough time to save up some more money and really have the “dream ceremony and reception” that we actually were wanting–our budget definitely did not account for a big wedding. So, we told everyone we’d informed about August 29th that we were postponing to 2021. Thankfully again, we hadn’t sent out save-the-dates yet, which oddly was a huge blessing for us both financially (sending mail to that many people isn’t cheap!) and mentally (contacting a million people to tell them that our August date was a no-go would have been pretty emotionally taxing, and this whole thing was already an emotional whirlwind).
So. We didn’t know there was about to be a pandemic. We had absolutely no idea what was about to happen. And, while God encouraging us to postpone our wedding hurt so deeply at the time, while it wasn’t something that we understood, it was actually the best thing for us.
I can’t even imagine how much money we would have lost if we hadn’t cancelled our August wedding in March. Booking a venue, catering, sending out save-the-dates and invitations, and countless other things… It all adds up terribly quickly, and frankly we didn’t have the security to deal with that sort of financial loss.
On top of that, the stress of going forward with a full-on, traditional wedding while in the midst of a global pandemic, while also knowing that it would possibly have to be canceled or severely altered, would have been too much mentally for us, or at least for me, this spring and summer. I was working and living full-time at a nonprofit center during the onset of a crisis that none of us had ever encountered before, and my top priority was loving, caring for, and protecting the coworkers and students who I was quarantined with. Add a possibly-not-going-to-happen wedding to that and you’ve got a recipe for disaster.
So. Finances. Mental health. Physical health. God cares about them. He loves people. I’m sure that He protected us from other issues by encouraging us to postpone our wedding, too, but I just don’t know about them.
As a friend of mine once told me, “Sometimes you’re running and running full-speed through a field, but you don’t know that you’re running towards a cliff because you can’t see it through the tall grasses. But God loves you so much that He would rather break your legs to protect you from running off the cliff than allow you to continue running and fall to your death.”
That’s what God did for us. By encouraging us to postpone our August wedding, He broke our legs so that the damage would be as minor as possible (though it felt pretty major at the time).
So. Let’s rewind.
It’s the beginning of March. We tell our immediate family and close friends that we are, again, postponing our wedding–only this time, we don’t know what the new date will be, but we expect we’ll reschedule for 2021. We’re disappointed, but we trust God, and we know that we can trust Him more than we can trust ourselves. We know that He loves us enough to break our legs in order to protect us from running off a cliff.
And then, we just sit tight. We live our lives. We work. We go to coffee shops. We go to the movies. We go to restaurants with our friends. We shop in crowded stores. We have toilet paper. We don’t have surgical masks. It’s early March.
The pandemic is looming, walking, sprinting towards us.
It’s coming, and it’s about to change everything, only we don’t know it yet.
We don’t know anything yet.
Yet, at the very least (which really is the very most), we know to trust God.
This is Part 2 of a multi-part series about the author’s experience as a bride during the COVID-19 pandemic. Keep your eyes peeled for future installments!
Photography for this series was done by Alex Shaw. Check out her work here:
https://www.instagram.com/5alexshaw/
https://www.alexshawphotography.com/welcome
https://www.facebook.com/AlexandraShawPhotography
