The last two years of the pandemic have had an impact on everybody across the world, it created new challenges for everyone and affected people in different ways.
Whilst there are many things that have caused various degrees of upset and inconvenience for many, we all have our own personal stories about how they impacted us.
Many of us have felt isolated and lost as our daily routines were changed, for some it was no longer going to work, for some they could work from home but that raised its own challenges in itself, some had to still go to work and whilst others may have looked on with envy at being allowed to carry on with a semblance of normality in their days for some this added pressure and fear into their life’s that hadn’t previously been there.
Alongside all of that was the disappointment and upset that we suffered due to having our plans and lives changing due to the circumstances outside of our control.
That may have been in terms of not being able to achieve goals we had set or in not being able to see friends and family, go on holidays, or celebrate events in our own or others' lives. For me, one of the main challenges I had aside from my whole business and income being turned upside down was the impact it had on not being able to get married as we had planned.
In 2019 I got engaged and we started planning our wedding, setting the date for 25/5/2020.
By the time the pandemic hit we were in the final stages of planning, we were going to Morocco for our joint hen and stag do in March and then getting married in Kos with around 30 immediate family members and friends before returning to the UK for an evening reception for our wider family and friends.
A week before our planned Morocco trip everything changed when lockdown hit.
It was the day I was having my hair and makeup trial followed by a wedding dress fitting, I had just got into my dress and was standing looking at myself in the mirror when my phone rang and when I answered it was the travel company telling me that the Morocco trip was cancelled and everything, we had planned to date went down the drain.
As the world shut down, I took one call after another.
Meaning that, over a period of several days. The hen and stag do. the wedding, the reception, and the honeymoon were all cancelled. It was a tough time not just because of the disappointment about the wedding but because at the same time I was taking calls from most of my business clients telling me that they were putting a pause on my counselling and coaching services until they figured out how the pandemic and lockdown was going to affect them as a business. I felt like the bottom had fallen out of my world. I didn't know what was going to happen. I didn't know whether we would be able to get married that year or whether I would have a business at the end of it.
Had a period where I didn't even want to think about the wedding and how we were going to replan it. It felt like the world had gone mad every day it felt like there was more bad news throughout the UK and what started off as a planned four-week lockdown just seemed to go on and on.
On top of all that, I had been organised and had the wedding rings engraved with the wedding date beforehand and I didn’t want to be wearing a ring for the rest of my life with the wrong date on it.
Friends and family tried to tell us that it would be alright, and we could just rearrange the day for later that year and that in years to come we would look back and laugh but it didn’t feel like that to us at the time it felt like the world was against us.
As we move through April into may and our planned wedding date came closer, we decided that we didn't want to spend the day that should have been our wedding day sitting around and thinking about what should have been so I pulled myself together and started planning a day that me and my husband to be would remember in years to come. We couldn't get legally married so I came up with an idea that would be the best we could hope for in the circumstances.
I contacted a celebrant and talked to her about my idea that whilst we couldn’t get legally married, we could have a commitment ceremony on Zoom with all our friends and family there to watch.
Initially, I was thinking it was just a way to mark the day
We could exchange our vows and rings so the date would still be special to us, but once I had shared my idea with Mike and before I knew it, we had made plans to decorate the garden with balloons and flowers, and we had a videographer planned in to film/record the ceremony, we were choosing music, we ordered some food and drink and the best man and my son were prepping their readings.
The 25/5/2020 dawned and was the most beautiful day of the year so far, it was a bank holiday Monday, and the weather was hotter than it would have been in Greece. Mike and I got up and started blowing up balloons and adding them to stands to decorate the garden. You might be thinking when that we were mad as are only going to be the two of us in the garden, but we wanted to make it special for us and give us something to really remember. I had ordered a bouquet and a buttonhole for Mike when they arrived with a lovely display of flowers for the table in the garden, we could feel our excitement building. We got dressed up Mike wore a suit and I wore the short ivory dress that I had planned to wear to the legal ceremony in Kos.
We had an amazing day with friends and family supporting us
We said our vows and exchanged rings then raised a toast to each other and to the friends and family who were there to support us online. We spent time afterward celebrating with them all and made what could have been a day we looked back on with sadness into a day that makes me smile whenever I look at my ring. As far as we are concerned that’s the day we got married and I became Mrs. Taylor
It was only when we received the footage that we realised the videographer had got all our guests to leave us a message before the ceremony and then had mixed clips of us and our guests and our music throughout which has given us an amazing memento of the day and something that we can treasure almost as much as our memories of that day.
It took several attempts before we could make it legal and even more attempts to finally have a full celebration with friends but that’s a whole other story.
