Let’s rewind a little bit and go back to 2011. Ryan and I met in high school on the sandbar and dated on and off throughout high school and college. He is truly my best friend and I imagined our wedding day from the very beginning of our relationship. Ryan finally popped the big question on June 14th, 2019 and boy did we have a rollercoaster of a wedding planning process from that date until our wedding day on March 13th, 2021.
I started planning our wedding right after the proposal and Ryan and I decided that we wanted a destination wedding. Immediately I thought of one of my favorite places in the world, where I studied abroad and a place that Ryan has wanted to visit: Italy. I planned a beautiful wedding at a villa on the Amalfi Coast of Italy for October 3rd, 2020. I had everything planned from the flowers to the rehearsal dinner venue and then in the beginning of March 2020, the world went into a global pandemic.
Never did a think that I would be a #covidbride when I got engaged. I feel so much for all of the people that had big life events that were affected and did not happen because of this pandemic. We decided to postpone the wedding to May 5th, 2021 with the hopes that international travel would resume. Unfortunately, October 2020 rolled around and we were still in the height of COVID so we decided to find a venue in Florida and let go of our dream Italian wedding.
We found a historical rental home in West Palm Beach that we fell in love with and booked right away for March 13th, 2021. I had to reimagine our wedding and learn to just be flexible and go with the flow during this time. This change did reignite my excitement for our big day to finally happen. After many discussions with my planner, my mom and close friends I planned a wedding at this historical home that I was confident in and felt great about.
In the middle of January, everything was set in place and we were counting down the days until March 13th. Then my wedding planner Katie called me and asked if I had looked at my email. There was an email sitting in my inbox titled “Changes” from our wedding venue. After reading the email we realized it was not just changes, it was a cancellation. All I could do at this point was laugh and call my mom.
After calling everyone that I know and explaining the situation, we had a great friend Cristyle connect us with a local that was open to us having our wedding at his home. Words cannot describe how grateful I am to these two people for making this day actually happen for us. Through all of the ups and downs and rollercoaster of emotions, it all ended up working out and thanks to a few very special people we got married on March 13th, 2021.
