When you start planning your wedding, one of your primary responsibilities as the bride is to think about everything that could go wrong and come up with a plan to fix it. I’m sure you have done exactly that, mentally troubleshooting potential disasters at each point in the timeline for your wedding day. What if it rains? What if the best man loses the ring? What if a zealous aunt blocks the photographer’s view of the bridal entrance in her eagerness to capture the moment on her iPhone?
But in all your planning and preparing, it never occurred to you to plan for this. When you first set your date, you couldn’t have known that once you got this close to it, you would be having to worry whether your loved ones would stay healthy enough to travel or whether governmental restrictions would even allow them all to gather in one place to celebrate with you. Yet here you are in the midst of circumstances that would have seemed impossible only months ago, trying to figure out how to make this one day, this day you’ve dreamed of for years, possible.
You’re disappointed, and rightfully so. This isn’t your first or last encounter with disappointment, although it may be the most significant one you’ve dealt with so far. Even as you grieve the loss of the wedding day you’d hoped for, you are having to figure out how to move forward with plan B and the many complex logistics involved: communicating your changed plans to your guests, negotiating with vendors, and brainstorming additional contingency plans in case restrictions are extended. You have tough decisions to make, and I’m so sorry you’re having to make them.
When you’re in the midst of such an emotional situation, it’s hard to know what to think. Yet if you lose sight of why you’re getting married and what a wedding is supposed to be in the first place, your thoughts will grow even more scattered, unable to be collected. Now more than ever, you have to ground yourself in an accurate understanding of what a wedding is.
For as pretty and special as the details of a wedding are, they are not what makes a wedding legitimate. At the end of the day, you don’t need much for a wedding—look at the very first one in history. There was no white dress, no lengthy guest list, no lavish reception. But there was a man, a woman, and a covenant made before an authority who stood witness to the union, and so they had all they needed. Chances are, no matter where you live, you too have access to these essentials: your groom, your promises to one another, and someone to help you make it official. Truly, that is all your wedding needs.
Beginning your married life in this way that is so contrary to what you had planned certainly isn’t ideal, but experience tells me that reality often defies the ideal. In your marriage, you will often find that life doesn’t follow your plans. Yet it is in the unexpected moments that you can experience profound growth as a couple, and it is there that you can often find great joy as well. This wedding, whenever and however it happens, may well be such a time for you and your soon-to-be husband.
I don’t know your situation, so I can’t tell you what to do, even if you wish someone could make the decision for you. If my mom, who got married thirty years ago this June, could give you advice, she’d tell you to go to the preacher’s office and get married on the date you’ve been planning for, and then have your party when it’s safe for everyone to celebrate together, whether that be later this year or sometime in 2021.
Your wedding won’t look the way you pictured when you first sent out those save-the-dates, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be a real wedding. You will be entering into a lifelong covenant before God with the one you love as you stand before your officiant and say your vows, and this, the fact that you are beginning your story as husband and wife, is what will make your wedding beautiful. It doesn’t matter if you get married in the living room with only your parents and your officiant or whether you get married next summer in your dream venue. However you choose to adjust your plans, your wedding day will be special. I hope you will find great joy as well as you take the love of your life to be your husband, to have and to hold for richer or for poorer, in health and Coronavirus alike.