In part two (check out part one!)of our series highlighting real couples and their wedding experiences during COVID-19, we chatted with Molly and Hawkeye. Their original May 1st wedding went through a series of changes, from postponed to canceled to… well, we’ll just let them tell you in their own words.
Where were you in the planning stage when you had to make changes to address the COVID-19 crisis?
Our wedding was planned for May 1st. The wedding was only 6 weeks away (mid-March) when things got shut down in the San Francisco Bay Area. We were so close! We had just finished finalizing the guest list. All the little stuff was started — the cards for the tables were almost done, the wedding program was ready to be printed, and the day-of-timeline was basically set.
That’s rough to be so close and have to postpone! When did you end up rescheduling for? When did you make the final decision to reschedule?
Well, at first we stalled. We emailed everyone attending, explaining that the Bay Area (and the state of California) is shut down but we’re going to wait two weeks to see what happens. So then we sat in limbo for a couple weeks. But at the end of March we realized we were going to need to postpone.
On April 1st we sent out an email letting all our guests know we were postponing our wedding. We used the subject line: “No April’s Fools! We’ve got a new wedding date!”
We didn’t want to wait too long because we’re excited to start a family, but we needed to find a date that worked for all of our vendors and as many friends and family members as possible. After some back and forth, we finally landed on Labor Day weekend (2020). Our friends and family were super supportive and hopeful that they could make it, so we were pretty set on that date.
But a couple days after we settled on that date, we both realized that we had a lot of grief in losing our original May Day date — 5/1/20. There was a lot of symbolism there for us of fertility and regrowth. For a wedding that we ended up planning fairly quickly, it had all become very meaningful to us and we realized that we didn’t feel as connected to our new date of 9/4/20.
Where did you go from there, with your drastically altered wedding plans?
During this time we heard about a couple that had to postpone their wedding reception but was still planning on holding the ceremony on their original date with a very small group of people. The couple was planning on having a big celebration one year later. We both really liked that idea!
The “drop box” for marriage license applications.
But at that point it was the second week in April. The first thing we needed to do was get a marriage license, which meant figuring out if that was an essential service. Luckily, Alameda County was still issuing marriage certificates. We had to jump through a few hoops — including dropping our filled out application in a converted garbage can — to get our marriage license in a rush. In the end, the county very kindly overnighted everything to us so that we got our paperwork in time for our elopement.
During this time we were also trying to figure everything else out — who to invite, where to have the ceremony, and how to make it all happen. A friend of Hawkeye’s had offered to be our officiant originally, so we checked to see if he’d feel comfortable officiating at our elopement. He was onboard. My (Molly’s) brother and niece live in the area, and they were totally in for a social distance elopement.
From there, friends and family started coming out of the woodwork to help us. My brother’s girlfriend did my niece’s hair and also brought some folding chairs. Our officiant's fiance made bouquets for me and my maid of honor, plus boutineers for the guys. Our original photographer didn’t feel comfortable attending, but we ended up with two friends who offered to take photos for us. Everyone was so thoughtful and really helped bring it all together.
As far as food, we ended up ordering single serve salads from Mixt, bought some chips and ordered a couple individual eight-inch cakes from Masse’s Pastries in Berkeley. They turned out so yummy and were also one of my favorite snapshots of the day because of what we had written on the top of the cake. Since Hawkeye and I started dating, we’ve moved a bit quicker on the relationship timeline than most, so we’ve constantly had to answer questions about why we decided to get married so soon. So we had them write on one of the cakes: “Molly & Hawkeye, Love Wins, Not Preggo!”
There’s usually all this pressure to go the formal route with a wedding so it was just so lovely that we were able to keep it casual and low stress while receiving so much help from everyone.
Tell us all about the elopement! Where did it happen? How did it go?
For a long time it looked like this would all happen at the Berkeley Marina. But late April was still pretty cold this year, and we wanted to do it at sunset, which can be even colder right by the water.
So then we thought of the Lawrence Hall of Science — it’s up on the hill, a little more inland and has a beautiful view. When we were there — just checking out the space — one of Hawkeye’s friends happened to be biking by...a friend who plays the saxophone and who we had just been talking about. We asked him on the spot if he would play sax for our elopement. He was totally game. Between the synchronicity of that moment and not having to worry about the cold, we knew we had our spot.
On May Day we had our mini-ceremony and celebration! My maid of honor walked down the aisle, followed by my niece. My brother walked me down the aisle while our friend was playing sax. We were still able to do the intention ceremony that we had wanted because we already had all of our May Day streamers that we were going to use for our original wedding. We both wrote our own vows, which became a bigger part of the ceremony than they would have. And we used a kid-style mic that my niece provided to amplify our voices so we could all social distance — it made for some great photos! Once the ceremony ended, we got to have an impromptu first dance to sax music. It was all so gorgeous and better than we could have expected given the circumstances.
So what’s the current plan for your “actual” wedding celebration?
Actually, because the elopement ended up being such an incredible event, we’ve decided not to have a big wedding later. We really feel like it was our wedding and we don’t want a “take two.” We’re moving on. We bought an apartment together. We’re ready to start a family and start the next phase of our lives. We do still want to have a party eventually, but it will be a lot smaller and much more casual… and not nearly as expensive. That’s the silver-lining of how our wedding worked out.
There are still sad things, of course, about not having our original big wedding. I’m (Molly) from the East Coast, so the rest of my family lives in New Hampshire. COVID-19 robbed me of having my dad walk me down the aisle and of our father daughter dance. We have a really great photo of Hawkeye’s dad and step-mom that we get to give him for Father’s Day, which is beautiful. But we don’t have that for my dad, and that’s a loss. Hawkeye’s mom lives in Seattle, so she couldn’t come either. So those are the sad pieces. But overall we had a really fun event. And all the little pieces and gestures became that much more meaningful.
In a time when it feels like everyone’s fear is heightened, it felt super sweet that everyone came together to celebrate our love.