Juuuuuust married

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This article was published 26/09/2020 (1855 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Sept. 26, 2020: Kaitlyn Heuring and Kraig Wiebe couldn’t have picked a better day to get married.

When the couple got engaged last July, they circled the date on the calendar, expecting a beautiful autumn ceremony at the Leo Mol Sculpture Garden, the surrounding foliage turning from green to striking amber and golden hues.

And so it was. On Saturday afternoon, the pair — the groom in a gray suit, the bride in a lacy, long-sleeved white gown — exchanged their vows, said their “I dos,” kissed, and started their lives together as a married couple, with 24 people in attendance. The rain held off, the sun shone.

“It went very smoothly,” Heuring said.

They truly couldn’t have picked a better day. One week later, and it would’ve been a different story.

No, there were no cold feet, but starting Monday, gathering sizes in Winnipeg are to be restricted to 10 or fewer people, as the city enters the code orange level of pandemic response. Heuring and Wiebe’s nuptials gave new definition to the phrase, “Just Married.” For them, it was more like juuuust married, juuuust by the skin of their teeth.

For brides- and grooms-to-be, the COVID-19 pandemic was definitely not on the registry: plans for ostentatious galas with hundreds of guests from in town and out were stricken from possibility, deposits for floral arrangements and caterers had to be renegotiated, and assigning seating got even more complicated with added considerations for physical distancing.

Taylor Dales and Rob Blank were originally supposed to tie the knot on May 29, but had to postpone the big day due to rising COVID-19 cases and restrictions on gathering sizes that made celebrating less than ideal. The couple then rescheduled to Sept. 27, not knowing at the time the date would be the last one for at least a month that would allow for a wedding with more than 10 people in attendance.

“We found out yesterday that we beat (the restrictions) by a day, otherwise, we’d not be getting married and have to reschedule again,” Dales said Saturday. The next available date at their venue, Hawthorne Estates in the RM of St. Clements, was in 2022.

“We’re so excited to get married,” Dales said, adding they planned to take photos with Corona beers as a visual nod to the circumstances.

“And we know that we’ll be able to actually have the wedding,” Blank said. “All we really have to do is show up. I just feel so sorry for the people scheduled to get married next week.”

One of those people is Brittany Mahood, who was supposed to get married to Alexander Grant on Oct. 3, with a ceremony at the St. Norbert Ruins and a reception at the Cloakroom in the Exchange District.

“Pretty much right (as the government announced the changes) my wedding planner called me,” said Mahood, who as a professional wedding photographer has seen both sides of the conundrums pandemics have caused for couples.

Mahood and Grant immediately informed their guest list the wedding was postponed, and the planner took action. “She’s currently in damage control mode,” Mahood said. She called the vendors — the florist, the photographer, the charcuterer. “If you haven’t ordered the meat, please stop.”

Mahood said this week was a roller-coaster ride. On Monday, Dr. Brent Roussin said while case counts were rising in Winnipeg, the population size was large enough that any major restrictions weren’t likely to come into effect for a while. By Friday, that changed.

“It kind of feels naive to say, but we were slightly blindsided,” she said. But ultimately, the restrictions are something she understands and accepts.

“As much as this is stressful and emotionally devastating, it’s just the right thing to do, and we want to honour that,” she said. “We’ll still be legally married, but it will look different,” she added.

Courtney Zdrill and Geoff Makara are in a similar position. The couple was supposed to get married Oct. 10 — “a neat date, 10/10/20,” Zdrill says — and were really starting to get excited for their wedding, which was always going to have a small guest list of 50 or fewer.

“All summer, I was thinking, ‘We’re fine, we’re fine, we’re fine,” Zdrill said Saturday. “So obviously yesterday was an absolutely crushing day.”

Zdrill and Makara are still planning to get married, but with just themselves, their parents, and their respective grandmothers in attendance, plus the officiant. It’s not what she had planned, but it will still feel special to marry the love of her life, she said.

“When it comes down to it, how many people are you going to remember being there? I know I’ll remember my fiancee’s face as I walk down the aisle and as we say I do,” she said. “It’s all about love, in the end.”

That’s how Heuring and Wiebe felt when wedding photographer Lauren Cox put her camera away and the couple sat down for a post-wedding interview with a newspaper reporter.

“It was kind of a blur,” Heuring said of the wedding, as a woman walking a dachshund through the park eyed her dress and smiled.

“It’s definitely a neat story,” she said.

ben.waldman@freepress.mb.ca