For Better, For Worse
Updates on our wedding in the time of COVID-19
In just six weeks Austin and I are getting married. It feels a bit different than I expected. While it is so much more thrilling and joyful than I could have imagined, there is this odd tinge of sadness. Last week Austin and I had to tell most of our guests that due to COVID-19, we would be unable to celebrate our wedding with them. We saw this moment coming. We knew that the pandemic would upend all aspects of our life. Still, we waited, just in case things changed by July. They did not. As ready as we were to pivot, it didn’t make sharing the news any easier.
Switching to a more intimate approach for our wedding day, though disappointing, wasn’t the hard part. Austin and I aren’t getting married to have a large, fancy party - though it is a lot of fun. We are getting married simply because we love each other; because life doesn’t make sense without each other. We planned a large wedding because we wanted to share and commit to that love in the presence of those people who also love us, most of whom have loved us since our first days. The hard part is that each one of these people has played a role in shaping us into the husband and wife we are becoming, and our wedding day won’t quite be the same without them there.
Photo credit: Nathaniel Brown
Since we knew we were likely to end up here, we’ve pivoted rather well. We’re planning an intimate ceremony followed by quirky things we wouldn’t be able to do in our original plan - things like taking photos at the coffee shop where we had our first date, or walking to the ice cream stand by the park in our finery. Yet it can’t be a normal small wedding. It will be a wedding in the middle of a pandemic, coming with a unique set of challenges. Social distancing practices means that we have to be creative, finding ways to spread out, or be outside. We’ve decided to forgo on any singing during our ceremony, in spite of how much I love to sing. These things are doable, but difficult. It breaks my heart that Austin and I have had to ask questions like whether or not we can even hug his family.
In the face of these challenges, one might wonder: why don’t we just wait? Why don’t we wait until this has passed, and we can celebrate with the whole family, spend time together without anxiety, and be able to hug often and freely? It’s a fair question, with a simple answer: Austin and I love each other. We’re ready to start our life together, to start our mornings in our kitchen, drinking coffee and tea together. We’re ready for his book collection and my book collection to become our book collection. At the end of the day, we want to say goodnight instead of goodbye.
“Love is knowing that even when you are alone, you will never be lonely again. And the great happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved. Loved for ourselves and in spite of ourselves.”
We’ve learned a lot about the nature of love over these months of engagement, like how love is always complete and yet continually grows deeper. I’ve come to really appreciate the strength of our love, as we’ve faced the uncertainty of each day of the pandemic. Even in a world completely alien, with him I feel whole and joyful. Over and over again, my thoughts drift back to the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians. The last verse, in particular, comes to mind now: “So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” During the pandemic, I’ve tried to rely on these virtues. Even in the face of so much uncertainty, when faith and hope fail, love remains. The Disney movies were right — love is strongest power in the world. There’s a good reason for this. Love remains because it has its source in Christ: “So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him…We love because he first loved us.” -1 John 4:16,19. The love Austin and I share has changed and strengthened us, because it reflects and is perfected by the love of Christ.
Changing our plans has been hard. Harder still is weighing the risks of contact with those few guests who are coming. Even so, those hardships pale in comparison to the elation I feel whenever I look at Austin. Love wasn’t something Austin or I was expecting to find, but find love we did, and it is more powerful that anything we could have imagined. I can’t wait to call this kind, gentle, brilliant man my husband, and to hear him call me his wife. So on July 11, in the presence of our families and of God, we will finally commit to each other, to love each other for better and for worse.
