My husband and I got engaged on February 14th of 2020. Mere days before the first Israeli Covid patient was discovered, and about a month before the first lockdown. We had absolutely no idea what was going to happen to the world in the next couple of years, and honestly just wanted a beautiful wedding like we’ve always dreamed of.

Oh how naïve we were.

This ‘Getting Married During Covid’ story contains a lot of life lessons that I learned the hard way, and I hope some of you who are reading this can learn some lessons too, maybe in a less hard way.

Planning a wedding during lockdown was not an easy task. The date we set (before Covid was a thing) was September 22nd of 2020, and we were super excited. When the first lockdown started, I didn’t panic, everyone was absolutely sure that the whole pandemic thing will be over by then. So we planned like any other couple, except more Zoom call than face to face meeting. in the spam of 3 months, we had a venue, photographer, DJ, makeup artist and a dress designer, basically the whole package. On May, lockdown was finally lifted and normal life started to roll, and we felt like we could relax and plan without concern.

Fast forward to July, things were starting to get bad again, and so we started to worry. Venues were closing, no wedding for more than 50 people, and just a lot of question marks hanging. I didn’t know what do to, and that was probably the hardest thing to deal with. We had no idea if we will be able to have the wedding in our venue, didn’t know how many people will be permitted, whether we were gonna have to postpone… just, panic.

Now, I’m sure most people dream of the perfect wedding, with your family and friends, somewhere beautiful, dancing all night. I know that I really wanted that, and it really upset me that I might not have that. And so my expectations kept getting lower and lower any passing day.

We had to call our suppliers everyday to make sure they are still okay. We set backup dates and backup venues, some that were just random fields somewhere, kind of ‘an underground wedding’ places.

I just wanted a wedding in a venue with 200 people (original number was 400), simple and modest, family and close friends.

Then, when we realized venues might not open, the hope became some beautiful open field with maybe 100 or 150 people.

A last, I just wanted a place to get married with my close family and some friends.

And then, when everything was so confusing, it hit me that I don’t need any of that. I mean sure, it’s nice to be surrounded by people you love on this special day, it’s nice to get married in a fancy place, but it’s not the point.

I just wanted to start a life with the man I love. I just couldn’t wait to be married to him, and nothing mattered anymore.

We eventually had to postpone the wedding due to the second lockdown. We got married on October 27th of 2020. The wedding took place at my parents’ garden, with about 50 family members and maybe 20 close friends. We had the best time of our lives. We danced, laughed, took beautiful pictures and were surrounded by love. I couldn’t have asked for more.

It sure would have been nice to have a ‘regular’ wedding, but I honestly wouldn’t have changed the one we had. It was special, it was ours.

I have so much more to tell about this experience. So much more that I’ve learned in this journey, so this is not the end of this story, just the preview.