John and Ardith's Wedding in Seattle, Washington

Luckily, we were able to coordinate with the Skansonia and our vendor team to land on a new date: Sunday, September 12th, 2021. We ended up eloping in the mountains on September 13th, 2020 in the interim, as the uncertainty of the pandemic made us realize that nothing was guaranteed. (That event was special and beautiful all on its own and deserves its own Real Wedding write-up, quite honestly.) We stayed in touch with our team as events and weddings were put on hold, and when restrictions began to ease and vaccines began rolling out, we re-engaged the wedding planning with cautious optimism. Out of abundance of concern, we decided early on in the re-planning process to require proof of vaccination to attend our wedding in person, which seemed like an over-correction until the delta variant began surging in the summer.

By the time the week of the wedding rolled around, we were looking at an event that had unintentionally become an elevated experience. It was a smaller affair, with about 75 guests in attendance. With the extra wiggle room in our budget, we added a few special touches like signature cocktails, a hand-written seating chart, a live strolling champagne performer, and a reception dress to allow for much more dancing. I remember wondering to myself how I would have handled an event with twice as many people, because even at a reduced head count, it was difficult to say hello and chat with everyone! We coordinated with the Skansonia and a local videographer who specialized in live streams to set up an outstanding virtual event; our remote guests had nothing but positive feedback and were happy to be able to join us from afar.

When we eloped in 2020, one of the conditions was that it would be a drastic departure from our big wedding celebration. We went to the mountains, just the two of us, along with our photographer, our officiant, and our elopement planners. When we met with our officiant, we asked him to use call-and-response vows, as we wanted to save our personal vows for the big celebration. Fast forward to September 2021, and we were able to hold our ceremony as originally planned, with my now-husband's brother as our celebrant and our carefully crafted vows being read for the first time. It was also important for us to save the traditional Filipino veil-and-cord ceremony for the day we could celebrate with friends and family present; unfortunately, our original veil-and-cord sponsors could not attend at the last minute, but my mom and my aunt stepped in which made the ceremony just as special.

One of the other unintended consequences of our postponement was our first dance morphed from a simple, semi-planned dance, to a full-out choreographed routine with numerous dips and other complex movements. Back in February 2020, we had started taking dance lessons specifically for our first dance. When the pandemic hit, we continued taking virtual lessons as a hobby, and then went back into the studio where we continued learning and improving over the next year and change. When we confirmed the reception was back on, our instructor was so excited to completely re-do our first dance to show off our new skills. I have a dance background, having started taking jazz and tap lessons at age six, so our instructor also played into that, adding in quite a bit of showmanship and technical upgrades. Given the nature of our updated routine, we decided to hold our first dance towards the beginning of cocktail hour to reduce any chance of over-indulging in signature cocktails and champagne ahead of time! This ended up working out really nicely in other ways, as it allowed me to get changed into more comfortable 2.5" heels (versus the 4" stilettos I'd worn earlier in the day), as well as opening up more relaxed mingling time with our guests. The rest of the party went off swimmingly, with a lovely dinner buffet, a Filipino sayaw ng pera (dollar dance), a great dance floor courtesy of our DJ, and overall fun. We would be remiss not to give special recognition to our photographer, our MC, and our day-of-coordinator and venue staff for keeping everything moving on-schedule and like a well-oiled machine.

We had many of our close friends and family in attendance, and the day--as cliché as it sounds--flew by far too quickly. I remember immense feelings of gratitude and relief, as the weeks leading up to the event were still stressful and uncertain with the pandemic continuing to complicate things. We rode the post-wedding high for several weeks afterwards, and we were even more relieved when two weeks passed and there was no major covid outbreak from our fully-vaccinated event. We were even able to sneak a mini-honeymoon to Whistler in where we relished in finally holding the event we had dreamed of, even if it looked quite a bit different in the end.

As we look back on the last several years, from our engagement to the final send-off at our re-rescheduled wedding celebration, I cannot help but feel thankful for everyone who supported us along the way, be it friends, family, or our vendors and wedding planning teams. We were incredibly lucky to find vendors that weren't just talented, but compassionate and kind people all-around, and they helped us celebrate our love for each other, as well as our love for our family and friends, in a memorable and special way.