I’ve been wanting to share about our full journey with COVID and our wedding so that all of you who have also/are also/will also go through it know you’re not alone!!

As a quick birds eye view of our story, Ryan and I were supposed to get married on April 20, 2020, rescheduled to August 31, 2020, rescheduled AGAIN to May 3, 2021, and had a preemptive elopement on August 31, 2020 so that we could be legally married, while still planning to have our big wedding on May 3.

Ryan and I got engaged in May of 2019 after 6 years together. It was a day I waited V anxiously for and it was worth the wait, truly. You can read about our full engagement story and see all the photos HERE!

That summer we began planning our wedding and settled on April of 2020 for a few reasons. My work in the wedding industry makes me VERY busy in the fall and Ryan hates summer, so spring felt like the right fit for us. We chose Tenth Ward Distilling Company, a badass female owned and operated company in Frederick, MD that had all the industrial elements of my dreams. We also began planning our DREAM 30 day European honeymoon, which we planned to go on a few weeks after our wedding.

I’m going to fast forward through our wedding planning process but we hired the rest of our amazing vendors (shout out to Kate Ann Photography, The Otherside Creatives, Thurman & Fig, Fleurt Beauty Co), I spent a million and a half dollars on decor, etc, I picked a dress (actually I did this first long before we had a date or anything but that’s okay), did our engagement photos, sent the save the dates, invitations, family and friends made travel plans, (over 50% of our guests are coming from out of state) and were probably about 90% fully prepared for our wedding when……freaking MARCH.

In case you have forgotten what life was like back then, in early March we were all…aware of COVID? Mildly concerned? Growing alarmed? And then things RAMPED THE F UP. On March 7, I was photographing a wedding (hi Rachel & Nick!), and a lot of talk was being had about the virus. On my way home that night, I WEPT, like ugly cried because I had an overwhelming feeling that our wedding, just 6 weeks away, wasn’t going to happen. I was positive. I shared this feeling with a few people, and everyone told me we’d be fine, because bless their hearts they were trying to make me feel better and no one knew how bad this was going to get, but i knew.

The following weekend was my bridal shower. The day before, I talked to my amazing Coordinator Anna (from The Otherside Creatives) on the phone, and she was the first person to confirm what I already knew, that it was time to make a back up plan. We went forward with my bridal shower, because it was only 20 people and back then we didn’t know yet that COVID was spreading through the air. Remember those days?? Had we known, we certainly would have made another choice, but thankfully everyone was healthy and remained healthy. And I’m so grateful we got to have that celebration. That’s the last time I gathered with my loved ones for who knows how long.

On March 16, Maryland officially banned gatherings of more than 50 people and that was the clear and final answer we had been waiting for. I knew it was coming and ultimately it was a huge relief to have the decision made for us, and not have to be the ones to make it, though I know we would have made the same decision. Naturally when I heard the news I lost my DANG mind even though I knew it was going to happen. I’m not even going to try to pretend that this wasn’t one of the most heartbreaking moments of my life. And it didn’t end there.

And this is what i really want other covid couples to know. this process is heartbreaking. it’s okay if you’re mourning the loss of the wedding you planned, and it’s okay to acknowledge that you won’t be able to have your original vision back. regardless of what happens, it’s all different now.

While we’re all out here trying to be positive, and stay hopeful, the truth is it’s just all so full of frustration, anxiety, and sadness. ALSO, I know I regularly feel guilty for feeling so sad about my wedding while people are dying in droves from this virus. And let me be clear that I am SO grateful for the health of my loved ones. Like so grateful. We have been truly blessed so far. But it’s okay to be grateful AND to acknowledge that this is been hard. There are absolutely worse things that missing out on the wedding you dreamed and planned for, but that doesn’t mean it’s not really freaking sad and hard.

It’s impossible to know what this feels like without having been through it. It was and still continues to be a nightmare. BUT, this is the situation we found ourselves in and Ryan and I, with the help of our angel coordinator Anna, got to work on figuring out a plan. We were fortunate in that we were always planning to get married on a Monday (it’s a theater thing and a money saving thing), and that made rescheduling SIGNIFICANTLY easier. I can’t recommend weekday weddings highly enough.

In less than 48 hours, we had a new date. We chose the end of August because that was before my busy fall wedding season and (we thought) far enough away that COVID would be under control (LOL AT PAST US). Our vendors were instrumental in making this process so smooth. We called/texted our families and wedding party, and then notified everyone else about the change via email since our wedding was less than 5 weeks away, with the intention of sending new invitations as the date got a little closer.

I’m not sure that I ever felt super confident about our new date? But as the weeks went by it was becoming clear that we could not count on safely getting married in August. Sometime around mid June we realized it was time to make a Plan C. It was important to us to prioritize not limiting our guest list. That was our personal preference, which is not true for everyone! But for us it felt like our options were the tiniest wedding of immediately family, or our full guest list. So we wanted to wait until we could have all our guests celebrate with us safely. Our plan C was to reschedule againnnnn to May 3, 2021, because OBVIOUSLY that would be enough time right? (LOLOL WHEN WILL WE LEARN) And once again our vendors were incredible and so understanding.

While that felt like the right plan, we really didn’t want to wait that long to be married. Ryan may have been more patient in waiting it out but I basically said I’M NOT WAITING WE NEED TO GET MARRIED THIS SUMMER. We began talking about doing a very tiny ceremony at home, with the commitment to each other that we would still have our big wedding. I of course still wanted this day and ceremony to be beautiful, so we re-hired all of our same wedding vendors to support us on this day as well.

So we got married. We had an elopement/microwedding at my sister’s beautiful home on August 31, with just ten guests in attendance who were immediate family and Ryan’s best friends who are more like brothers to him. And it was absolutely beautiful despite the fact that it rained all day (I’ll share a full blog about this day too). It was of course clouded in COVID concern, but it was a day I will remember and cherish forever and it was so, so special.

I also want to slip in here that it is very hard for me to get excited about things. I think I’ve always been this way? Things don’t feel real to me until they’re happening because I fear them getting taken away. This is a thing I’ve been trying to work on and ACTIVELY worked on allowing myself to be excited for our wedding….and well, it was taken away. And then taken away again. And now, if I’m being completely honest, which is the point of this long story (thank you for reading), I feel like it’s likely to be taken away for a third time, because we are committed to not putting our guests in danger.

So if you, like me, have been on a very not fun rollercoaster with your wedding plans this year, I just wanted to say that it’s okay to feel sad, angry, exhausted, and apathetic. It’s hard for me to be excited about our big wedding because it feels so out of reach. And while everyone keeps saying love is not cancelled, which is true, it’s also been rescheduled, changed, dampened….all the things. And it’s okay to feel that. I DO believe better days are ahead and that we will get through us, but those of us in this exclusive club that NO ONE wanted to be in will always have some scars from this experience.

xoxo
Alyssa