Gina + Alex / A pandemic wedding looks a little different, but has all of the same emotions
Gina + Alex // Minneapolis, MN
I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be married this year. We should start with the obvious. The wedding ceremony and reception is really about one thing - it’s about celebrating your love. The marriage itself is different from the celebration. It’s a personal experience for two people that defines their bond, commitment and journey they have chosen to take together. Nothing can get in the way of the latter.
Your bond is the beginning of a new life and the culmination of an entire lifetime spent in search for this specific partner. It’s a remarkable journey and it’s such a whirlwind of pain, suffering, mistakes, and experiences that create the person you will later become. This beautiful whirlwind eventually leads you to this partner that you have to pinch yourself (or pinch her - in my case) to believe it’s even real. And while nothing can take the love inside of your heart away from you. Outside factors have proven that they can take away the ability for you to celebrate the victory of finding your love. It’s annoying for us all.
Luckily, there are always special ways to continue to celebrate love. And this is what we saw here today. Gina and Alex decided that they were getting married no matter what. The date was set in their minds and while the celebration wouldn’t look the same on this day, this day would still mark the beginning of their journey together.
It was one of the first Covid weddings of the year in early May. The state was on lockdown and the mystery behind the virus was ever prevalent. Only the immediate family was in physical attendance, but, in spirit, the seats were filled with all of their loved ones. As a special surprise for the couple, the family filled the seats of pews with all of their guests. A print out of each guest was taped to their respective chair. It gave me the warm tingles. Modern technology had us streaming the ceremony live and then in perfect Flow magic, a surprise unbeknownst to us all appeared as we exited the church. It was a celebration drive by! One “would’ve been groomsmen” threw a beer out the window, Alex catches it and drinks it promptly with a smile. A line of cars appeared. People safely distanced outside, honking their horns and yelling their well wishes. A few brave souls stepped in for a picture or two. You could feel the appreciation and energy in the air. The surprise was perfect. The wedding, intimate and meaningful was enough to create a bond with love forever. However, it’s the community that makes a celebration of love feel real to me. Seeing smiling faces, friends, family and everyone who has been with you through the heartache and growing pains that often left you lonely and wondering if your true love was actually out there somewhere also waiting for you. I have wondered this exact idea since puberty.
Love, marriage, and it’s celebration now felt complete with the parade of cars, honking horns, streamers, and signs of well wishes. The brides mouth seemed to continually drop to the floor. You can’t fake those types of smiles. You can’t fake these interactions. And if you know me and flow, I hate faking anything. I want us to create moments so extraordinary that when we immerse ourselves into them and experience the moment fully that it is only then that we capture your joy and love authentically. It is in this light that we call can take a moment to appreciate everything that has brought us to this moment in time.
I think to myself at the end of every wedding that this is it. This is the culmination of an often tumultuous journey. We beat all the odds. We are here and witnessing something so magnificent that it needs to be shouted from the balconies, it needs to create dancing on tables or on the mountainside. We are all looking for our own little slice of heaven and I won’t let you take that away from me.
In the times of Covid, they may have tried to restrict how we gather. It’s obvious that nothing can take your love away from you; but they tried to make our celebration of that love feel wrong. And to that idea, I’ll say it again - I’ll drive by and throw beers out my window, I’ll dance on tables, I’ll serve deserts in individual wrappers, but for the love of all that is holy and good, don’t ever try to stomp out the passion and reason for why we are all here today. We are here to celebrate love and the insane journey each individual takes to get here. I don’t restrict myself when it comes to the explosion that exists inside of me when I think about it. I can’t think about dancing too close to you. I can’t think about you not seeing my smiling face. 2020 was a mess for so many of our clients, but when they got to the big day with us, all their worries faded away. You are here to celebrate you. Everyone else is here for the same reason.
Our joy cannot be contained.
