Double the Weddings, Double the Love

For additional articles related to our wedding check out my post on wedding budget tips or how to maximize credit card points with wedding expenses.

A Pandemic Wedding Story

Hart and I got engaged in February 2019 after about 2.5 years of dating. We had recently become transplants in Chicago after being transplants in Atlanta for 3 years. This made it difficult to figure out where we should host our wedding. We decided to get married in his hometown of Myrtle Beach, SC. It was somewhat central for a lot of our guests who were predominately traveling from NC, SC and Georgia. We picked, what we felt, was the most perfect and symmetric date – June 6th, 2020. We had no idea we’d be planning a wedding during the pandemic.

The Pandemic

We were pretty much done planning our wedding and just a few months out when the pandemic began. At the beginning of the pandemic, no one was really sure what life would look like a couple of months later; so, we were hesitant to cancel or postpone our wedding; but I felt crushing anxiety about it. So, we decided to rip the Band-Aid off and postpone it by late-March/early-April 2020. At the time, our wedding planner required we pick a date in 2020; so we picked as far out as we could – November 26th, 2020.

Plan A

As June approached, we felt less likely that our November wedding was going to happen. Hart and I wanted to be married and we had fallen in love with our wedding date. We fell in love with the symmetry of the date and had all of these ideas to incorporate hexagons into our day and lives as a symbol for our unity. With all this, we decided that we wanted to get married on June 6th even if it was just the two of us and we could celebrate our wedding with others later. We looked into eloping at Chicago City Hall with a photographer, but we couldn’t get a marriage license. City Hall was closed due to the pandemic and the only way to get a marriage license was with extraordinary circumstances. Did they not understand our love is extraordinary?? Ha!

Plan B

While, I would have loved some Carrie Bradshaw-inspired City Hall wedding photos, we needed to figure out another option. Fortunately for us, we found that the courts in Lexington, SC were open for business. We mailed in a marriage license application and planned a last minute trip to South Carolina to get married. Given that we needed to married in SC, we decided to still get married in Myrtle Beach, but instead of our original venue; we opted for something more lowkey.

Elopement Details

By this point, we were fully committed to eloping and needed to start preparing some details. It didn’t take much planning since it was going to be a low-key affair; but we still wanted it to feel special and monumental.

The Dress

I bought my original wedding dress in July 2019 from Suite Bridal in Atlanta, GA, and then dropped it off at Davis Imperial in Chicago for alterations in January 2020. Once the shutdowns began, Davis Imperial had to close their doors and my dress wasn’t quite done with alterations. I decided the best option would be to look at Lulu’s for some wedding dress options. They’re super affordable and cute, but I wasn’t sure how they’d look on me. Back then, they had a much smaller selection than they do now. They have TONS of options and they’re great dresses. I’m sure a lot of other brides used their wedding dresses throughout the pandemic.

I ordered a few like this (which I loved!), and this, and this one; but ultimately found my winner with this dress. It was perfect for our smaller ceremony, but still felt like a wedding dress and I loved the jewels on it. I was able to find a place to alter the length and shoulders with a 1.5 week turnaround so that it would fit me on our wedding day.

The Final Touches

Luckily, our officiant was still available that day so we were set on someone to marry us once we applied for the marriage license. The next to-do item on my list was to figure out photography. I knew I wanted a photographer for our wedding photos. We were going the more casual route, but having someone to capture the day meant a lot to me. My first thought was to call up our original photographer, Riley Morgan Young, to see if she still had the day available from our original wedding like our officiant did; and luckily, she did! She drove up from Anderson, SC and took the most amazing photos of us getting ready, during the ceremony and post-wedding couple shots on the beach.

Even though we couldn’t all get together in person, we still wanted the family members who couldn’t attend to be able to watch us say our vows; so, like everyone throughout the pandemic, we turned to Zoom. We had one phone set up to record a video and one set up for our family members to watch via Zoom. It worked out great!

Location & Food:

Once we had an officiant and photographer, we needed to figure out where we would be able to do it. For the location, Hart’s mom lived down the street to this beautiful beachfront park with an arbor overlooking the sand. It seemed like the perfect place for something spontaneous. I’m sure you typically need a permit, but we were in and out within 30 minutes. No one seemed to care. For a post wedding celebration, we headed back to Hart’s mom’s house for some shrimp & grits in the backyard. It was so nice to experience an intimate wedding with some of our family members. I would have loved for all of our immediate family to be there, but we were able to celebrate with them via Zoom after the ceremony as well.

I am so glad we decided to elope and looking back on it all, I would not change a thing. An elopement was the perfect way to have a wedding during the pandemic. We had to postpone our original honeymoon to French Polynesia so we drove to Charleston for a few days to celebrate with each other. It was such a special week even with all the chaos going on around us.

The Long-Awaited Wedding Celebration

By August 2020, we knew we were not going to move forward with our wedding celebration in November. Everything was still not great and we didn’t want to put any of friends and family at risk. We worked with our wedding planner, Sara from Stunning and Brilliant, to figure out a new date that worked with all of our vendors. Similarly to the first postponement, we wanted to pick a date as far into the future as we could. At this point, we were already married so the point in having the wedding was to be able to celebrate with all of our friends and family safely. We landed on November 27th, 2021.

From August 2020 to November 2021, there wasn’t a ton for us to do wedding planning-wise. We already planned most of the wedding leading up to our June wedding, so it was just a waiting game. In this time, we bought our first home, went on our much anticipated honeymoon, and just enjoyed settling into married life. There were some small details that we needed to work through, but all of the big items were good to go.

Last Minute Panics

Everything was going great. The vendors were on top of everything, we were finding the perfect detailed editions to our wedding and the weather was projecting to be perfect. And then, BAM! The weekend before our wedding there was a huge cold front expected and it was supposed to be near freezing in Myrtle Beach. We could not believe it. A few days earlier, I was hanging outside in my bathing suit. I was super stressed because our wedding was at an outdoor venue. I didn’t want a tent because the venue was so beautiful and I thought it might take away from that vibe. To be frank, I also thought the tent was terribly ugly.

However, my wedding planner was amazing and made sure she still made my look come through. The Wednesday before the wedding, which happened to be the day before Thanksgiving, Sara was calling different vendors to get clear siding for the tent and additional greenery to drape from the top. Having a wedding planner for the pandemic was amazing, but I am in awe of how quickly she saved the day with the weather. The day of the wedding, the tent looked amazing. It was intimate and romantic just like I wanted.

Let’s Party

From there, everything was perfect. We had a beautifully intimate ceremony where I cried the entire time (no surprise!), we celebrated with different cultural traditions like jumping the broom and a Youngstown cookie table, and best of all we were finally able to celebrate with our closest family and friends.

We used Artifice Films for our videography and they did such an amazing job. You can see a teaser from our wedding here.