A wedding in the time of COVID -19
I am sitting down to write this reflection piece on January 28, 2021 and exactly one year ago to the date I was mailing out…
I am sitting down to write this reflection piece on January 28, 2021 and exactly one year ago to the date I was mailing out our “Save-The-Date” cards; little did I know that 8 months from then I would also be sending out “You’re uninvited” cards. Last year was one for the history books and I cannot believe I was lucky enough to be one of the rare brides that was able to get safely married during a global pandemic. I was with Danny for far too long to let a virus stand in the way of our marriage.
Danny & I met our freshman year of college at Salisbury University when we were just a mere 18 years old and we dated through college, after college and finally on a cold weekend in February 2019 he brought me back to our alma mater, got one on knee and asked me to be his wife. It was about damn time! I was just finishing ultrasound school at the time and we both wanted a crisp fall wedding but we knew we wouldn’t be ready by Fall 2019 so we decided on October 17, 2020 (originally wanted 10/10/2020 but so did every other bride apparently). I had already instagram-stalked all our major vendors so we were able to do a hefty bit of planning before 2020 even rolled around.
Knowing that I was marrying into a large Irish-Catholic family I knew this would become quite a large affair so being self-aware of my attention-deficit flaws I knew I would be in the need of a wedding planner. I found Jenna at Pop the Cork Designs through instagram wedding pages. Her work was tagged in a lot of styled weddings that I admired and she immediately came in and laid out a solid plan and I got carried away with all the fun design ideas that we had. I wanted our wedding day to be an absolute party, I even tried using the slogan “Make Weddings Great Again” but that ended up changing to “Make Weddings Safe Again”.
We all can recall that week in March 2020 where it felt like the whole world shut down but everyone was saying it would be gone in 2 weeks. Danny & I were privy to the sad knowledge at the time that it most likely wouldn’t. I am a Diagnostic Cardiac Sonographer for Union Memorial Hospital in Baltimore City, Maryland while Danny is a Firefighter and EMT for Prince George’s County, Maryland. So we both were smack dab in the frontlines of this pandemic. It was a scary time to be working. I can still remember the earriness driving into work on Interstate 95-North and it was completely empty. Hardly any cars in sight. If you are aware of the Baltimore metro area, you know that 95-N is typically a parking lot. Everyday driving into work it felt like I was driving into the unknown and unsafe territory, never knowing if that day was going to be the day I would contract this mysterious and deadly virus and potentially bring it home to Danny or my family. I remember seeing social media posts with brides fretting about their wedding plans and it upset me. Here I was working every day in a hospital worrying when I could get a fresh N95 because the one I had been wearing for 10 days was stained with my sweat and the straps were frayed. I couldn’t believe that out of all the things going on in our country, brides were ranting about having to reschedule their weddings because of state restrictions. I did sympathize for them, but my wedding was the last thing on my mind to be honest. All I wanted was for our friends and family to be safe & healthy this year so we could all celebrate together.
As the summer months rolled around and more information about the virus came to light, Danny & I were still faced with the decision of what to do in the fall. We were cognizant that there could be an uptick in COVID-19 cases in the fall and we wouldn’t have a vaccine out yet. We were driving back to Maryland from North Carolina where we laid out all the scenarios and on that car ride we decided we would still get married but we would drastically downsize to ensure the health and safety of our guests. As I had mentioned before, Danny is from a large family and we couldn’t just invite “some” of them so we came to the conclusion that we had to cut our extended families. I had reached out to a vendor on Etsy to create custom cards for me that explained the decision we had to make and informing the recipients that they were no longer able to attend our wedding. It was such a hard decision but we don’t regret it because we were able to have our event without a single guest contracting the virus. Also, we heard back from many of our guests that received the uninvite cards and they loved them! Our wedding ended up being an intimate affair of 40 guests that were our immediate family members and our closest friends that had been a part of Danny’s and my relationship for years.
Not many brides can say that they were able to eat their dinner or talk to everyone on their guest list, but I was fortunately able to do both! With downsizing our guest list we were able to do some more fun things for our guests and wedding party. Danny had custom baseball bats made for his groomsmen while I had given matching pajama sets and slippers for the bridesmaids. My father had refurbished a 1958 Chevrolet Apache Truck 10 years ago in our garage at home and he always joked that he would drive me down the aisle in that truck, little did he know that I actually found the truck to be beautiful and wanted it featured in our pictures. It was such an unique feature to have and I will forever cherish those pictures. Another favorite feature of our wedding was the champagne wall! My Mom and I assembled escort cards and fastened them to ribbons that would be displayed for guests to collect and find their seats. Danny had only two requests for our wedding: the first was to pick out the DJ (shout-out Jason you were amazing) and the second was to have custom koozies with our wedding crest logo on them. I also took the precaution of ordering custom surgical masks for our guests should they choose to adorn themselves with our wedding PPE. I thought about ordering signs listing out the CDC Guidelines for mask wearing/precautions but I had enough of CDC guidelines being thrown in my face at work so I didn’t want it thrown in my face at my wedding. Fortunately all our guests were thoughtful and obliged to common sense/safe practices anyways. I especially didn’t want to look back on our pictures and see us all holding Corona beers and squirting ourselves with hand sanitizer, I am sure we will all clearly remember how terrible this year was without those images in our photo albums.
Reflecting back on this experience of being a “Corona Bride” I can’t help but feel extremely fortunate. Yes there were times that I wanted to scream and cry about the COVID restrictions but the majority of my memories from the day & process were joyous ones. If there is one thing I learned from the process is the fact that there really are no rules. Have the wedding you want to have. Invite only the people you want to share the day with. If you don’t want a wedding cake, then don’t do a wedding cake. If you think the Cupid Shuffle is a burnt-out wedding song, don’t have your DJ play it. If you don’t want your father to watch your husband go up your dress to get your garter, don’t buy a garter. Wedding traditions were tossed in the year 2020 and it was only about survival. Good Luck 2021 Brides and Grooms, may the odds be ever in your favor.
Photos by Paige Ryan Photography
