By Nicole Amaral
On a sunny Sunday in early June, I swapped out my quarantine uniform of yoga pants and a loose T-shirt for a hot pink backless cocktail dress that required a complicated adhesive bra situation. I put on makeup for the first time in three months, curled my hair and painted my nails. Rob put on a suit, and together we emerged from our quarantine bubble to get our engagement photos taken.
Like everything else scheduled for Spring 2020 (including my shower, which I wrote about last time), this event had been postponed. Originally set for early April, we bumped our photo session into June to be on the safe side. Thankfully, it ended up being a beautiful day, and our photographer (Ashley McCabe Photography) found the perfect, secluded park by the water in Bristol where we were able to take fun and joyful photos away from people. We posed, we kissed, we twirled, we climbed on rocks, strutted down the dock, and stared into each other’s eyes (while being sure to remain a safe six-foot distance from our photographer). It was fun. Life felt normal for a little while. At the end of the session, we took a couple photos with our face masks on, for posterity’s sake.
I haven’t done any wedding planning since everything shut down in March. There was plenty I could do from the couch, but the undercurrent of anxiety due to the virus was too much for me to be able to design invitations or research florists. Rob and I have just begun to once again dip our toes into planning. Luckily, we’d booked most of the big stuff before Covid-19. I remain cautiously optimistic that our Spring 2021 wedding will be able to move forward as planned, but I will just have to accept that I can’t know for sure what the world will look like then.
I wish I had more in the way of advice to offer to others in this situation, other than an empathetic, “This sucks, doesn’t it?” Platitudes like “This too shall pass” and “Take it one day at a time” have felt less than comforting under the crushing weight of worry about keeping my job and the health of my family and friends, never mind my wedding.
But, at the end of each day, I am thankful that Rob and I have our health and that we have each other. Despite all the stress of quarantine, we’ve had a lot of laughs on the good days and had each other’s backs on the bad ones. We will have an awesome wedding, one way or another. Until then, we will do our best to stay healthy, stay hopeful…