My COVID19 Wedding Was Beautiful! 💍💕

We were supposed to have a HUGE wedding: 150+ guests, big venue, DJ, caterers, a 3ft wedding cake, professional planners and decorators, the works... but then COVID19 happened and things changed. 🤔

Our wedding isn’t until Summer, but we didn’t know how long it would be before the country is really safe again. We thought about pushing the wedding out a few months. We didn’t want to wait several months before finally getting married, but we knew a big wedding wouldn’t be super safe right now... so we decided to split our wedding into two parts: Part 1 & Part 2. These pictures are of Part 1 which was this past Friday ❤️

Instead of having our ceremony inside our Home Church with the 100s of dollars worth of decorations we rented, we had the ceremony on the front porch of the church, so we wouldn’t bring any contamination inside the doors. It was decorated with nothing but 9 beautiful people standing 6ft apart. ⛪️

Instead of entering the church doors and walking down the aisle, I hid behind a tall shrub until it was time to walk down the sidewalk and meet my Dad at the bottom of the porch stairs. 🌾🌾👰🏻🌾🌾

Instead of a DJ, my MOH played music loud and proud from her car speakers so I could still walk down the “aisle” (sidewalk) to our favorite song. 🚗🎶

Instead of 150+ guests sitting in pews, we had a tiny group of people (includes only immediately family and closest friends) drive up to the church in their vehicles and celebrate from a Safe Distance. 🚘 Only our parents, my one brother, my husband’s grandfather, and the Pastor stood on the porch with us in the open air (at 6ft apart).

Instead of a huge reception at our Wedding Barn venue where the guests would eat a professionally catered meal 🍛🍾, there was a driveway full of cars at my in-laws’ house 🏠, and a back porch full of family who ate fresh grilled burgers and hotdogs 🍔 (less than 10 people could fit our whole immediate family!)

Instead of my husband and I having our first dance on the dance floor, we had our first dance as Husband and Wife in the kitchen 🥰

The day did not look like we imagined it. 🙅🏻‍♀️ It didn’t go as we had been planning it for 11 months. It was smaller. It was simpler. But it was more beautiful and perfect than we ever could have dreamed. 💕 I am so thankful for our families and our wonderful friends who worked hard to help us throw together our sweet little Wedding Part 1. Wedding Part 2 with all the bells and whistles will be scheduled for a safer time TBD so we can get a chance to celebrate our love with all of our extended family, church family, and friends. 🎉

If you read this far: thank you for reading our story. I hope it gives you hope that, even in dark and uncertain times such as this, joy is still possible. You CAN get through this, you CAN make the most of it. We are all in this together. My heart is with all of you who had plans messed up because of this nasty virus... but you know what they say. When life gives you lemons 🍋...