Sophia Lee thought she’d be heading to the altar next month. She had the dress, the rings, and two plane tickets for a honeymoon in Eastern Europe. Instead, she and her fiancé, David Hermann, are in a holding pattern. The couple is sheltering in place in Los Angeles, preparing to watch their April 25 wedding date come and go. Like fellow engaged couples the world over, their wedding plans have gone the way of the polite handshake—that is to say, up in smoke.
Back in mid-March when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention first recommended people avoid gatherings of 10 or more, Lee and Hermann, both Christians, made the tough call to cancel their large wedding ceremony. Lee, a senior reporter for World magazine, had already known for a few weeks that her extended family from South Korea would probably be unable to make the trip. So she and Herrmann made the gut-wrenching decision to plan for a smaller wedding with just their local pastor.
They figured they’d have a small ceremony, forgo their planned trip to eastern Europe, and opt for an Airbnb in Sequoia National Park, where they could honeymoon on a smaller scale and quietly grieve their best laid plans. But even that option now seems unlikely.
Situations like theirs are unfolding all over. Couples who had planned weddings even into the summer are grappling with a world totally unlike the one they knew when the engagement ring first sparkled in the light. Travel restrictions mean out-of-town guests are off the list. Large venues are closed. Some couples are postponing their wedding, while others are moving forward with small ceremonies. Some are even heading to the courthouse, if the courts are still open.
Whether to postpone or cancel a wedding is an especially tough decision for Christians, who are committed to living apart and being celibate until after the wedding.
Alex and Alexa McMahan had been planning a March 22 wedding in Winter Park, Florida. As more and more guests canceled and news of the virus devoured feeds, Alex and Alexa chose to transform their 120-guest event into a small outdoor ceremony in front of just 30 close family members and friends. The rest were invited to watch a livestream of the ceremony on YouTube.
Alexa said that was crucial, especially for her grandparents, whom she and Alex had originally invited to be their “flower girl” and ring-bearer. Alexa suspects they might have risked traveling to the ceremony had the livestream not been available.
The McMahans never considered postponing. “We had decided no matter what happens, we’re definitely going to get married this weekend,” Alexa said.
She and Alex met in 2018 on match.com and have lived apart for the duration of their relationship, Alex in Ohio and Alexa in Florida. They agreed not to live together before the wedding, which factored into their decision to forge ahead despite the pandemic. “I had left my job, and my lease was ending in May,” Alexa said. “And I’m in the process of applying to graduate school in Ohio. It was kind of like, we want to get in the same place and get settled.”
As couples like the McMahans scramble to make difficult decisions, their pastors are problem solving on the fly, too. Ashley Wooldridge is senior pastor at Christ’s Church of the Valley, a ten-campus church with 35,000 regular attendees in the Phoenix area. He said he’s counseling couples not to cancel their weddings.
“We’re just trying to come back and center couples on the vow they’re making before God, and that they can still do that in a smaller ceremony,” he said. “We’re doing a lot of backyard weddings right now.”
Wooldridge said he understands the emotional weight of making drastic changes to what have been, in some cases, lifelong wedding dreams. Still, he believes the crisis could be a blessing. “What an opportunity during this time to say, ‘Let’s go back to what the absolute most important thing about a wedding is, and that’s the covenant you’re making.’”
Source: Christianity Today
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