My Covid wedding: an event rooted in love and renovations

I was never the type to envision my perfect wedding day – what dress I would wear or what kind of flowers I would have. So, when my now-husband and I sat down to create our recommended wedding “priorities list” post-engagement, we quickly identified themes surrounding authenticity, people and memories. Four weeks prior to our wedding day, New York implemented lockdowns to mange the Covid-19 pandemic, threatening the very thing we’d been most looking forward to – a celebration surrounded by our closest family and friends.

Our motivation to gather with loved ones ran deeper than only wanting them to witness our marriage. The five years leading up to our April 18, 2020 wedding day had been overshadowed by health issues and – with that – a loss of connection to the very parts of my lifestyle that used to feed my social soul. Dinners out, travel, and even phone calls with friends became limited, infrequent and inconsistent due to the severity of my symptoms. I could push myself to show up and fake smiles and functionality, but my brain fog, energy levels and memory had been so severely impacted that it became nearly impossible to stay present in much of anything.

As a result, we saw our wedding not only as an event to celebrate our marriage, but also a sort of coming out celebration.

The decision to have a wedding at all was not one we made lightly. Our finances had been gravely impacted due to medical expenses, and we had real concern about whether I’d be well enough to even endure a full-day celebration if we had one. But, we didn’t want my health to take one more thing from us. We wanted a party – a space for reconnection.

As a 35 year old living in what felt like a 70-year-old body at the time of our March 2019 engagement, I was eager to get married sooner than later. With my sister scheduled to be married in August 2019 and my brother living between the U.S. and Nepal managing his nonprofit organization, we settled on April 2020 as a perfect time to have my whole family in attendance and also to escape the inconsistencies of Western New York winters.

Insert: joke’s on you comment by the universe here.

Throughout 2019, I had experienced significant health improvements, though my stamina was far from consistent. Regardless, we stayed hopeful and kept planning. We fell in love with a renovated factory building in the Finger Lakes – an authentic space that we could also make authentically ours. We made a promise to set boundaries with unnecessary stresses and maintain our focus on what felt both affordable and personal. Even in hindsight, I believe we stuck to that well. Everything we planned had intention, and as we continued working daily through my own health renovations, it felt good to lift the focus off survival needs and onto something fun for us as a couple.

In early February 2020, I began to feel steady improvements from a new treatment regimen that I had started three months prior. My brain fog and lethargy lessened and I started to experience more clear, energetic days than cloudy, painful, and tired ones. Now two and a half months before the wedding, my personal health renovations began to shift our cautious optimism toward confident excitement. I remember turning to Jason at one point during this time and saying “I may actually be able to enjoy and remember our wedding.”

There’s a difference between physically showing up to an event and bringing the rest of your mind along with you. Until February, my days looked something like: perhaps I’d feel well, and perhaps I wouldn’t. Maybe I’d remember an event, and maybe I wouldn’t. Surely, if I was lucky enough to be fully present and energized at an event, I would pay for it days to weeks after. This had been the case for my sister’s wedding in August 2019. I slept and prepped and worked my way up to the day for weeks – a huge accomplishment for me at the time. It then took about two weeks for me to fully recover from it. My energy always had a reserve tank that never completely refilled.

Our wedding ended up taking on a form of excitement I had not felt in years. Not only were we getting married, but this would be one of the first social events since 2014 that I’d attend feeling functional and present. And, for a person who thrives off of social interactions, this was a huge deal.

On March 15, 2020, a few days after completing the seating charts, I sat on the gray chair in the corner of our bedroom, tears falling through multiple slow blinks as I saw CNN’s banner announce “CDC RECOMMENDS NO GATHERINGS OF 50+ PEOPLE FOR NEXT 8 WEEKS.” The wedding would have to be cancelled – not because of my complex health issues or the unpredictable New York weather, but a historic worldwide pandemic.

We were devastated. I cried and grieved and spiraled myself into a pit of questioning why the universe was playing this joke on us after all we’d been through. I felt a pit in my stomach not only for the loss of our wedding, but the loss of our coming out celebration. And yet, I could only allow myself to spiral so far. We had logistics to deal with. I had clients to take care of. I had my health to continue caring for. So, I grieved, we pulled ourselves up, and refocused those priorities we still could control: the memories.

We decided to move the wedding to October 2, 2020 – far enough away, we had imagined at the time, for the world to return to “normalcy” and for us to have the wedding we had already planned and paid for. When the pandemic continued into summer, we decided to postpone again to late 2021. When considering my being immunocompromised, the distance our guests would need to travel, and our guests ages and own health issues, we simply did not feel comfortable asking people to risk their health for us to celebrate.

So, on October 10, 2020 – our third wedding date – Jason and I tied the knot among the autumn leaves at an Airbnb in a tiny off-the-grid town just south of the Adirondack Mountains. We invited only our immediate families, Jason’s grandparents, a photographer and one family friend who’s also our wedding planner. All along, our officiant had been our sister-in-law, so that made it easy to have a wedding anywhere we wanted. We quarantined and Covid-tested and created our own safe haven for a small legal ceremony in a beautiful renovated barn – an authentic space that we made authentically ours.

Every part of the weekend was a collaborative effort, from the food to decor to my updo to those who stayed home in order to keep us all safe. Sadly, Jason’s sister was one of these people, as she tested positive for Covid on October 8. We experienced this as another loss, and also felt the kind of deep love that families experience when doing everything possible to keep one another safe.

We truly could not have asked for a more beautiful weekend for a legal ceremony. We got married, carved pumpkins, played yard games, roasted marshmallows, danced with glow sticks, laughed, cried, ate, drank, and loved a whole lot. Our dog, Marconi, and I even got stung by bees to keep things exciting. We all brought dishes to pass and shared space making home-cooked meals. My brother became our very own barista, serving his nonprofit’s own Sapana Coffee. I busted out my Beautycounter and dolled myself up in clean makeup.

I didn’t wear my wedding dress. We didn’t have our wedding party. All that will be saved for a time when it’s safer to gather. Instead, this became its own beautiful, special event filled with love, gratitude, intimacy, and sunshine (really, we had actual New York 70-degree sunshine in October).

I read several blog posts and articles in Brides.com and The Knot throughout 2020. Many of the posts were filled with stories of brides describing how the pandemic helped them realize what’s truly important about a wedding – that marriage is about celebrating two people’s love for each other rather than the event itself. While there’s certainly truth to this statement, this was not the learning experience for us. Every piece of our original wedding had already been planned with authenticity, gratitude and intention. Nothing felt excessive and everything had already felt like us.

So what did we learn? We learned that getting married and having a wedding are two different things. We learned that sometimes we can best show love and protection through distance. We learned that we could have two weddings, that we could still maintain control when the world feels out of control, and that a health crisis isn’t the only challenge our relationship would endure before tying the knot. It would also endure social distancing, isolating together, working from home together, and dry heaving over deep, visceral fears of another four years of the Trump administration together.

Our small October legal ceremony gave us memories that will last a lifetime. It was intimate, cozy, collaborative and fun. And, when it’s safe to do so, we will renew our vows in that old renovated factory building and celebrate again. It will still be a coming out celebration, only this time we won’t only be re-entering from the isolation due to my health issues. We’ll also be emerging from the physical distancing of a worldwide pandemic. These sound like great reason to get dolled up and have a party. I imagine that a lot of hugging and embracing will be in store.

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Photo credit: Sarah Wintle Photography