A Wedfuly Micro Wedding Part I: Love in the Time of COVID

You know how some girls spend their whole lives dreaming about their wedding days? They have Pinterest boards dedicated to their color schemes, ring shapes and cute hand crafted signs they will display artfully at their someday weddings. I prided myself on not being “one of those girls.”

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I got engaged at the beginning of May 2020. Right in the heart of a global pandemic (never saw that one coming!) Eric proposed at the top of a mountain on my very favorite hike. It was perfect in every way. However, shortly after we began the wedding planning process we started running into some major obstacles. How long was this COVID thing going to last? Do we try to wait it out so we can safely invite all of our guests? I felt so overwhelmed already and I hadn’t even begun to make any decisions. 

Around that time, I had a brief conversation with my long time childhood friend, Caroline. She is the founder and CEO of Wedfuly–an online virtual wedding planning company. “Em, don’t even take on the stress of trying to plan a full-sized wedding right now,” she said. “Just get an Air BnB in the mountains, invite your family and invite the rest of your friends virtually.” My wheels started turning. It sounded so nice. So intimate. So simple and elegant. But I wasn’t convinced yet. I had so many special friends that I couldn’t imagine not being there on my wedding day with.

For not being “one of those girls” I sure had a lot of dreams for my wedding day that I had never even realized. And they mostly revolved around the guest list.

A few weeks passed and the numbers with coronavirus continued to rise. I thought about my beloved grandma, Sugie, and the possibility of her being exposed to the virus. Eric and I decided it just wasn’t worth it to try to have a full-sized wedding, given the current state of our world. We decided to have a “micro wedding” and include the rest of our guests virtually through Wedfuly. We had nailed down the majority of our details. We would have the wedding in Vail, Colorado in my aunt and uncle’s backyard. There would be 30 people in attendance–only immediate family and 2 of our closest friends (maid of honor + best man). His dad would officiate and his precious niece, Maci would be our flower girl. I was feeling SO excited! Things were coming along nicely and all of the details felt so right–so “me”.

…and then I attended a dear friend’s full size wedding. I was not expecting the emotions to hit me like they did. I was at the reception…surrounded by over 100 people, in a beautiful venue and I felt a few tears gather in the corners of my eyes. This is what I wanted. All of these people, with me on my special day. I remember drying my eyes and turning to Eric and saying, “this is the first time I’ve really felt sad about this.” He comforted me and reminded me of how special our day was going to be. It was just going to look different. 

A few days later after I had vented on the phone to my mom (my preferred method of stress release–sorry mom!) I felt much better. I realized that the wedding that we were planning would still include our closest friends, they would just be joining from their living rooms, patios and backyards. They would still get to watch me walk down the aisle, exchange our first kiss and watch Eric cheesin’ as he had the biggest grin on his face during our first dance. Also, I had been relieved of the stress of picking official bridesmaids…something that felt SO overwhelming to me. But, perhaps the thing I was looking forward to the most was the intimacy that would come with our micro wedding. I anticipated getting to have in depth conversations with my cousin Nat, who I hadn’t seen in forever. I looked forward to getting to dance with Sugie and laugh with my cousin Quinci at my brother’s dance moves. I knew that I would get to be fully present with the ones I loved the most. 

Up next…
The Big Day!