10.16.2020

October 16, 2020 was supposed to be our wedding day. After looking at dozens of venues in many different areas of the U.S., we finally booked our Orlando venue for a Friday in fall and imagined our guests drinking around the world with us at Epcot the following Saturday. We knew we’d be moving to Florida soon for a (so we thought) short stay, and the cheaper rent + close proximity to our venue was supposed to make wedding planning a breeze. HILARIOUS, right?

Luckily since we were so preoccupied with moving our well-established California lives across the country, we halted all wedding plans until we were safely in Florida. We had an engagement party in Oakland shortly after New Years, and that would be the last time we’d get to celebrate IRL with friends for the rest of the year.

As the COVID numbers got worse and worse (and Florida chose to deny its existence), we postponed for five months hoping a vaccine would be making the rounds by spring, and spent our original wedding date getting our engagement photos done and celebrating with just the two of us.

We don’t know if we postponed long enough. We don’t know if we’re lighting our bills on fire when we sign a new vendor contract. We have friends and family members who have to fly overseas, who have compromised immune systems, who lost their jobs, and who don’t want to miss the chance to celebrate our love.

Planning a wedding in 2020 is really just the pits.

I go from having butterflies in my stomach imagining myself walking down the aisle in the most beautiful dress I’ve ever worn and seeing this handsome guy waiting for me in a sea of lush green plants surrounded by all our best friends to ugly crying thinking about all the people who would have been there if this was any other year or imagining some super spreader scenario where we accidentally kill off our grandparents because we were selfish and impatient.

Then I remind myself that I’m lucky. I still have a job. I still have my health. I can pay rent. My family is safe. I have my person and two fluffy puppies. I’m a lot better off in this garbage fire year than a lot of people, and then I feel guilty for said ugly crying. After all it’s just a party, right?

But suffering is not a competition, and this year sucks for a lot of reasons. For me, one of those reasons is that I finally found the love of my life and I don’t know when or how we’ll get to celebrate that. But it WILL happen eventually. And when it does, no matter what it looks like, I’ll still be incredibly lucky to have found this guy and to have the supportive family and friend network that we have.

So here’s to 2021. May it be infinitely better than its predecessor.