The Day I Realized a Virus Would Cancel My Wedding

So here it comes, June 9. The day I was supposed to be in Greece, getting married. Instead, I’ll be working in the lower garage level of a children’s hospital, donning proper PPE for eight hours, screening employees for COVID-19.

My how the times have changed.

A week before St. Patrick’s Day, my mom and I Skyped the wedding planner to look at flowers. The week of St. Patrick’s Day, the hospital entered a lockdown to essential employees only, and I found myself driving home to what would end up as a nine-week quarantine under strict stay at home orders.

But really when did it strike me that the June 9 wedding of our dreams set overlooking the sea would be no longer? I’ll tell you when. During a game of cards.

This entire quarantine experience gave us a huge opportunity to grow closer. When a ridiculous pile of time that we’ve never really had before spilled into our laps, we found numerous things to do to better ourselves. In “regular life” as I now call it, we’d hit up the usual happy hour spots, watch random episodes of Family Guy and yell hi’s and bye’s running out the door to and from work. Alas, thanks to COVID, those options dissolved and we had to get creative with how we used our time.

Those cards tucked away for that one day if and when we would decide to play a game? Welp, out they came. One YouTube video later, we learned how to play Spite and Malice. I like it because I usually win. And that became our routine. Good music, good bourbon and a game of cards. Almost every night. And this one night, it changed an entire wedding.

I don’t remember the exact date. But what I do remember was this. As we were getting ready to settle in with our new normal, Bruce Springsteen blared and the Bourye bottle of bourbon whiskey from High West Distillery flowed, and then it happened. The River.

“We went down to the courthouse. And the judge put it all to rest. No wedding day smiles, no walk down the aisle. No flowers, no wedding dress.”

My new reality I was trying to avoid. The big fat virus killed the big fat Greek wedding.

And yet people like me, head always in the clouds, daydreaming of a perfect unicorn world, willfully move on. We have to move on. Once the song was over, I took a moment to seize the moment. The loss. The sadness. The disappointment. The disengagement (no pun intended) from the destination wedding that wasn’t going to happen. The what now. The reality that no one ever saw coming.

But you know, it’s actually ok. Because we’re ok. We’re healthy. We’re in love. We’re ready for anything. Even if it’s just one giant no more Coronavirus party in Greece sometime next year and a wedding ceremony on our home turf sometime this year. Time will tell. Our day planners won’t. And everything will be ok.

COVID-19 may have taken the wind out of our sails, but we will sail another day. From one sunny Greek island to another without the insanity of planning a wedding across the globe and worrying about the health and well being of others traveling so hard and so long to celebrate what really, in the long run, is a rather small slice of life. And life we are truly living. And truly loving.

After all, it really is about who you are with, not where you are.

*But don’t get me wrong, it’d still be nicer in Greece.

Opa!

—

Previously published on “Hello, Love”, a Medium publication.

—

***