Something old, something new The pandemic has thrown a wrench into wedding plans, but couples are finding different ways to celebrate their dream day By: Jen Zoratti Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Thursday, Jun. 11, 2020

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 10/06/2020 (1562 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Andrew Goodlett has a new saying: “You only get married twice.”

When the assistant principal bassist for the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra married cellist and educator Natalie Dawe on May 12, 2020, it didn’t look at all the way either of them pictured it — though, to be fair, Goodlett’s ideal wedding was always a bit of a long shot.

“My dream wedding plan was to have Natalie and I get married at the Indianapolis 500, because I’m from Indianapolis,” he says with a laugh. “But I knew that was never going to happen.”

Dawe’s dream wedding plan, on the other hand — to get married in her parents’ backyard in Alma, N.B., which overlooks the Bay of Fundy — was to become a reality in August, until the novel coronavirus forced them to postpone until next summer. The couple had heard tragic stories about celebrations of love becoming “superspreader” events and, with half the guestlist having to travel internationally, they didn’t want to chance it.

But they didn’t want to wait, either. And so, on May 12 — the date they met four years ago — they got married, over the teleconferencing app Zoom.

Goodlett and Dawe are just one of many couples who have had to radically scale back their wedding plans in the face of the pandemic. All over the world, people are cancelling, postponing and changing their big days, sending ripples through the event-planning industry.

“Weddings are emotionally charged to begin with,” says Emma Singh, the founder and CEO of Events by Emma, one of Winnipeg’s pre-eminent wedding and event-planning companies. “Throw in a worldwide pandemic and it’s devastating.

“I think what we’ve been telling everybody is, ‘Love isn’t cancelled.'” –Emma Singh

“I do a lot of really large ethnic weddings with anywhere from 500 to 1,000 people. How do you tell 500 people you can’t have your event and they can’t come? It’s stressful to think about having to make those calls and send those emails.”

Happily, she’s seen a lot of compassion over the past few weeks. And, she says, “couples still want to get married this year, and a lot of people have milestones and celebrations that cannot be missed.”

So, Singh, too, has had to pivot. Her company is now offering a suite of micro-event and wedding packages, which she bills as “simplified plans for complex times,” she says. Events by Emma has partnered with 11 local businesses to offer all-inclusive, one-stop shop packages, which adhere to current Manitoba distancing guidelines and ensure that couples are still able to do something beautiful and personal, safely and stress-free.

“We’re adapting the best we can to this new normal, while being present and relevant given the current situation,” she says.

Singh says that since the micro-events launched in May, she’s seen a lot of interest. After all, many couples are choosing, like Dawe and Goodlett, do something small and intimate this year, and postpone the big party.

“I think what we’ve been telling everybody is, ‘Love isn’t cancelled,’” Singh says. “Now’s the time to move forward and really appreciate each other and, when the time is right, they will have that big celebration.”

As for lasting impacts on her industry, Singh says weddings and events aren’t going anywhere — they may just look a little different until we can safely gather again.

“I have a feeling celebrations will be appreciated even more when the time is right.”

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Arielle and Craig Arnott were supposed to get married in July with 130 of their friends and family at Starlit Point, an idyllic venue just off Highway 75.

“It was all really exciting — and then the pandemic came,” Arielle says. “My mum lives out of town and it was clear it was going to be difficult to have her come here, and we were like, how long are we going to wait to get married? If we wait to get married in a venue with a bunch of people, we could possibly be waiting until next year.

“We just wanted to endure this time together, married.”

The couple got married on May 27 in Craig’s mom’s backyard in Stonewall with about 15 guests. They exchanged their vows under the arbour he built and decorated with flowers. She bought a tea-length dress for the occasion; she’s saving her dramatic gown for the reception she hopes to have next September.

She got her hair done, but did her makeup herself. “At that time it was difficult to find someone who would get that close to your face,” she says with a laugh.

“My grandpa walked me down the aisle, and we just had close family and our wedding party there,” she says. “It wasn’t stressful, and it felt really intimate and special.”

“The point isn’t to have a perfect party. The point was for us to get married.”–Arielle Arnott

Arielle says she wouldn’t change anything about their wedding day, or their quiet, stress-free honeymoon in the Whiteshell. At the beginning of the pandemic, when everything was changing, she made a conscious effort to keep perspective despite her disappointment. “The point isn’t to have a perfect party. The point was for us to get married,” she says.

“I definitely never would have wanted to associate this pandemic with feeling like it ruined something for me. And, I suppose, we’re part of history.”

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Like the Arnotts, Goodlett and Dawe didn’t want to treat their Zoom wedding as a backup plan.

“Originally, we thought we’d do a justice-of-the-peace-type thing, have it be more businesslike and formal, and then save the real wedding for next summer — but the more we got planning, that seemed a little depressing,” Goodlett says. “It’s still a wedding, we’re still getting married. You gotta call a spade a spade.”

Even though their families couldn’t be there in person, their Winnipeg friends helped make the day special. Musicians Will Bonness, Aaron Shorr and Nolan Powell performed in their living room. “We still had amazing music at the wedding,” Goodlett says. “I think that’s something that’s important to both of us. It’s a big part of our lives.”

Dawe teaches at the Douglas Kuhl School of Music in Morden, and her students’ parents offered to make all the food; her housemate India George made the cake. Dawe bought a new white dress and Goodlett, owing to a little quirk of his job, required a new suit; the one he performs in with the WSO has an intentionally oversized jacket so he can move freely.

“With the current restrictions, we couldn’t imagine everything being any better or more special than it was.”–Andrew Goodlett

Dawe walked down the aisle to a surprise combo arrangement recorded by four of her students, a mashup of Pachelbel’s Canon and Here Comes the Bride, escorted by their “flower girl” — a 100-pound female Irish wolfhound named Bruce. “She stole the show,” Dawe says.

Getting married via Zoom came with some unexpected benefits, including a less limited guestlist. “I was able to invite friends from college and other people I never would have been able to, and everyone was super stoked,” Goodlett says. “It was nice to see friends’ faces that maybe I hadn’t seen in person in a number of years.”

They also got a kick out of being able to see their guests at home. “You could see people in fancy clothes, some people in their pyjamas,” Dawe says. “One of our friends was making himself a sandwich in his kitchen.”

So, it wasn’t exactly what they dreamed. But it was pretty perfect all the same.

“We were talking about it afterwards,” Goodlett says, “and with the current restrictions, we couldn’t imagine everything being any better or more special than it was.”

jen.zoratti@freepress.mb.ca 

Twitter: @JenZoratti