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The March 21, 2020, wedding of Julie Samuels and Joe Hillyer ushered in an unparalleled time for the Vows and Mini-Vows columns. Because of the coronavirus pandemic and its crowd-size and social-distancing mandates, couples had to get creative about how to pull off weddings.
Ms. Samuels and Mr. Hillyer had their nuptials on the front porch of their home as a honking convoy of friends and family drove in circles around the block cheering them on.
A couple who met at the Dunkin’ drive-through window in Edmond, Okla. — she as an employee, he as a customer — said their vows through that same window with guests watching from the parking lot. The fashion model and labor activist Sara Ziff married the photographer Reed Young at a train station in Philipstown, N.Y. And some couples married with no one else in the room, their officiant beaming in over Zoom.
Their reasons for not wanting to wait varied: to honor a long-awaited wedding date, secure health insurance or to follow their dream of starting a family.
If weddings looked different five years ago, the permutations of romance that led to them held steady. Canceling weddings became commonplace. Love endured.
Here is a look at four couples who married during Covid despite the difficulties involved, and their reflections on how saying “I do” at such a fraught time shaped the relationships they’re in now.
Julie Samuels and Joe Hillyer: “The day of our wedding, we raised a glass with Brian and Andy across the driveway. Then we went inside and stayed there for two years.”
Kirsten Wazalis and Glenn Leader: “We got boring. Instead of going to happy hour, we learned everything there is to learn about family.”
Helen Kim and Peter Moon: “We were working seven days a week. We were stressed all the time. It’s nice to be an employee now.”
Sasha Jackson and Stephen Small-Warner II: “Looking back, the pandemic washed away what didn’t matter. I was able to focus on what I wanted to hold on to in the waves.”
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