It’s finally happened – I’m a Mrs. now. So much has happened since Mark and I got engaged over two years ago, especially in the past year. I’m so happy that I got to marry the love of my life, but I’m also glad that the whole thing is over. Weddings are stressful, even when you aren’t trying to plan around a global pandemic. Although I’ve been enjoying looking over the pictures of our big day, and enjoying large mouthfuls of leftover cake, I will be very happy if I don’t have to hear the word “wedding” for the next few months or so.
When we first got engaged, Mark and I had actually seriously considered eloping, but we decided that we wanted to throw a big party for all of our friends. After seeing what 2020 had in store for us, I guess we should have eloped back when we thought of it. But even before the pandemic, wedding planning was still stressful. Mark and I had a very particular vision in mind for a geeky, colourful wedding, and sometimes it felt like I had to fight to convince other people that our vision was going to work out. And trust me, it’s hard to convince people that orange and blue are the perfect colour scheme for a wedding. It became easier to just stop fighting, tune out any naysayers, and just keep doing what Mark and I wanted to do. But that was the worst we had to deal with during that first year of our engagement. Even when the pandemic hit, and we were stuck at home, I saw that as a blessing at first.
Back in March, I still thought I would be going back to my old job by the summer, so my time at home was more like a much needed break. I took the time to work on improving my physical health and mental health, and I did a ton of crafting. Back before we knew we were going to have to change our wedding plans, I took all of this extra free time to continue working on my bouquet and centerpieces. At the time, I had no idea that the bouquet was the only crafty project of mine that would actually get used in the wedding. (Most of the crafty stuff in our wedding actually ended up being contributed by our phenomenal neighbours and hosts.)
And then came the tough part. It became apparent that pandemic life was turning into “the new normal” and that having a wedding of 120 people in the fall of 2020 just was not going to be safe. And obviously, the tropical honeymoon we had planned was not going to happen at all. So we did what we could to try to salvage the wedding. At first, we rescheduled and moved it to 2021. And then we realized that COVID would still be an issue during our new date. Based on past pandemics, I think we still have at least another year of all this, if not more. Mark and I had to discuss, did we want to keep postponing the wedding until it was safe, or did we just want to get married? We’ve been common-law for long enough that we were already practically a married couple – the wedding was just to make everything legal. And, as I mentioned earlier, we had wanted to elope at one point, and were really only throwing the party for family and friends. We had already mourned the loss of our big party, so it didn’t make sense to keep postponing when we had no idea when it would actually be “safe” to have 120 people in the same room together.
Plan C was a half-hearted attempt to salvage some sort of “party” out of the situation, but that was short lived. So many people in our life are high-risk that we just did not feel comfortable getting even 30 people together just for the sake of having a party. It felt irresponsible. And the thought of hosting that kind of gathering, especially when we started hearing about all of the COVID cases that had come from weddings, really started to make us feel uncomfortable. When another minor lockdown was put into effect, we knew we had made the right decision to move to Plan D.
Switching to Plan D, the most pared down version of a wedding we could possible fathom, was still incredibly stressful. Even with the bare minimum, there was so much to coordinate, so many little details we forgot that friends had to remind us of. It was a lot of work. And we still had to deal with people who disagreed with the way we were planning our wedding. But, despite all of the stress and frustration, so many of our friends came forward to offer their services and support. It was so indescribably wonderful to see just how many people love and care about us. And along every step of the way, I still felt welcomed and loved by the family I would soon be marrying into. Knowing that your in-laws genuinely want you to be a part of their family is really meaningful.
In the end, I’m proud of what Mark and I accomplished. Even our Plan D wedding still contained the essence of what we had originally been going for with Plan A. And because we ended up holding the wedding over Zoom, that meant we could invite more people than our original 120. People who originally would not have been able to attend the Plan A wedding were able to watch us get married because of Plan D. We ended up with the absolute best COVID wedding we could have dreamed of. And we were surrounded by people who care about us, both virtually, and in person (from a safe distance and wearing masks, of course). But, most importantly, I married the love of my life. No matter what happened, no matter how good or bad our wedding turned out to be, none of that matters. And it doesn’t matter that we were so flustered and excited that we can barely remember our ceremony or speeches. What matters is that I get to spend the rest of my life with someone who means the world to me.
And now that we’re legally married, Mark is obligated to share his snacks with me ;P
