CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Hunter Neale was, quite literally, the picture of happiness when she posed for her bridal portraits last Friday afternoon.
Her mom and sister had come down from Virginia to help Neale get photo-ready, and “I had my hair and makeup done and dress on and feeling amazing — like everything was finally happening for me,” said Neale, 42.
Although a cloud was starting to form — President Trump had announced limits on travel to and from Europe a couple of nights earlier as the threat of the coronavirus intensified in the U.S. — everything generally still seemed to be on track for Neale to marry Mike Detrick in Charlotte on April 17.
“Up until this weekend, we were just kind of thinking, you know, our wedding’s a month away, things might be bad for a couple weeks, but this will all be over by then,” Detrick said. “And then … well, that all changed.”
On Sunday, the CDC recommended that no gatherings with 50 people or more take place for the next eight weeks to slow the spread of the outbreak; by Monday night, the White House was advising all Americans to avoid groups of more than 10; and by Tuesday, the shell-shocked couple had rescheduled for Aug. 28.
“We tried to deny what was going on for a few days,” said Jason Reynolds of Rock Hill, N.C., whose plans to marry Hayley Berrill at The Alexander Homestead in Charlotte on Friday evening have been postponed until it’s safe to gather in large groups again. But even before the government recommendations were announced, “we talked about how if we were to push and go through with it, one, we had a feeling that a lot of people would have to cancel at the last second, and there’d be 15 tables at our reception but we’d only have people at six of them. And two, with the amount of panic in the air, it was like, are we being socially irresponsible?”
Reynolds and Berrill, and Detrick and Neale, are among the many couples who are resigned to waiting it out and picking back up with their plans later this year — or whenever the coast is clear, so to speak.
But there are also plenty of couples that are still going through with ceremonies over the next month, albeit on a much, much smaller scale than originally planned.
Matthew Smith, 26, and LeeAnn Bruno, 26: Once it became clear that she’d have to wait on her dream wedding — the one she and her college sweetheart had set, more than a year ago, for April 4 at Providence Cotton Mill in Maiden, N.C. — Bruno had what she calls “a gut-wrenching bawl.”
“Obviously, I was sad, but mainly just so disappointed. So frustrated. I was mad more than sad,” Bruno said. “It does feel a little like I’m maybe overreacting, because there are so many people who are dying of this virus, but … our whole savings has gone into this wedding.”
They’ve been able to secure the mill and all the same vendors for their new wedding date of Nov. 1, with only one of the vendors asking for more money to reschedule.
But they’re 100% set on still legally tying the knot two weeks from Saturday.
The new short-term plan is to exchange vows on the grounds of a Lake Norman, N.C., property they originally had rented for the bridal party to stay in over the weekend of the wedding. A friend is getting ordained specifically to marry them. Bruno’s parents are planning to attend, though Smith’s mother and sister — and of course, loads of others — aren’t able to make the trip, so they’re thinking about live-streaming the ceremony.
If that falls through? The friend who’s getting ordained lives in the apartment complex next to theirs in Charlotte.
“So we said even if we’re sheltering in place,” Bruno said, “we’re gonna run over there on April 4th and have him sign our wedding license and get married.”
Keith Purser, 41, and Dionne Benjamin, 41: Things started to get particularly dicey for Purser and Benjamin when his best man contacted him to say he wasn’t going to be able to make it.
The problem is, his best man is an American ex-pat living in China, and over the weekend Chinese officials instituted a rule that would have required him to be quarantined in a government hotel for two weeks upon returning to the country from the U.S.
Over the next 48 hours, the plans for the April 5 wedding unraveled quickly.
So here’s what the backup plan is: That weekend, Purser and his 5-year-old son, Benjamin and her 15-year-old son and their parents will come together for a small ceremony (capped at 10 people) at the original venue, which is charging them $400 for that but otherwise is crediting everything they’ve already paid toward the eventual makeup date.
And that makeup date might not be for a year.
“One thought I had,” Purser said, “was for us to get married on the same day next year. So that the date actually means something. We looked into it, and actually, April 5th, 2021, will be a Monday, so maybe we’ll bump up our wedding one day to April 4th of this year, if they have that available.”
Mitch Hicks, 28, and Anitra Black, 28: Hicks and Black also were pretty married to their date.
It’s one that had jumped out at them quickly when they first started looking at the calendar, after getting engaged. March 21. 3/21. 321.
There was just something about it, and they instantly came up with the hashtags “#TheCountdown” and “#HicksIn321.”
So while they are postponing their wedding at the event hall inside a rustic, old, renovated mill (tentatively to July 18), they’re not giving up that date: The Charlotte couple will hold a small ceremony with only their parents and grandparents this Saturday in Winston-Salem, at a church where his father is pastor.
And they’re not giving up their general optimism.
“We grew up in a Christian environment,” Hicks said, “so our faith is very strong, and we always look at the positive side of things. It’s kind of like, just trust in God through everything, and know that everything happens for a reason and everything works together for the good. … This is just another hiccup in life.”
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March 29, 2020 at 11:43AM
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How some couples are dealing with weddings upended by pandemic - Boston Herald
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