Our Lockdown Wedding: Getting Married During a Pandemic

I never would’ve imagined we would have a lockdown wedding!

This year has been pretty surreal. We started 2020 looking forward to getting married. Our initial plan was a registry office ceremony, with a small group of just our closest people and food afterwards.

It didn’t take long before that idea grew into a bigger celebration. We wanted a small wedding, but we didn’t really want it to be over in a couple of hours! And getting married was something we were really excited about.

We looked at different options, different venues and my Dad suggested one we loved. A provisional date was booked (we were only giving about four months notice before the big day) and a venue viewing was arranged. The week of our appointment things started to shut down. Then the real lockdown came. Initially, the venue offered to keep our date in case things went back to normal quickly.

I think everyone (including us) was being optimistic.

After a lot of deliberation, and discussions with parents we decided the best move was to change our date. So we did. Again, ever the optimist I suggested August.

As we neared the next date it became obvious we weren’t going to get the wedding we had planned this year. Our venue suggested moving to 2021 which we’ve done. Wedding numbers were starting to go up at this point but we still didn’t know what kind of wedding we would be able to have. I didn’t want to have guests sitting to dinner and having to socially distance. I didn’t want to not be able to spend time talking to people and enjoying the company of people we’d invited.

You might be feeling a bit confused. I’m writing a post about our lockdown wedding, but talking about moving our wedding to next year. Well, the girl who hates weddings is having two! I’m really impatient, and when we decided at the end of last year to tie the knot I wanted to do it straight away! So we’ve decided to have our lockdown wedding (which I’m also calling round 1) and a slightly bigger celebration next year that includes siblings and friends. The lockdown wedding was really just to tick getting married off the list. Plus, it’s nice to have something good to come out of 2020 for us.

We ended up doing a complete 180º.

Because our lockdown wedding was really just about getting the legal bit out the way (romantic, I know…) we wanted to do it on as small a budget as possible. So we went back to our original plan of a registry office. As soon as it was announced that new weddings could be booked again in Scotland I was emailing Edinburgh Council weekly. I must’ve been doing their heads in!

At the start of July, we were told they were starting to take bookings at South Queensferry registry office again but they didn’t have any dates until October. It turned out that one of the dates available was the anniversary of our first date. So, of course, we had to book that date!

In Scotland, at the point of us booking our wedding the limit on guests was 20. The size of your venue does still determine how many people you have – venues still need to put social distancing in place. This meant that our numbers were 14 including us. Everything had to be done remotely. Normally you would take your ID and birth certificate into the registry office but we had to send all that in and everything was done over email in the lead up to it. I hate the unknown, so even the fact that I’d never been in the registry office was making me anxious. But the staff at South Queensferry were lovely and answered every question I had. Despite this, and the fact it was such a small ceremony, I still felt sick with nerves the night before and the morning of our wedding.

After having to change the date so many times, I was on alert for something going wrong.

The Scottish Government made an announcement a couple of days before the wedding and I was getting ready to hear weddings couldn’t go ahead or that my parents and best friend (who all live in South Lanarkshire) wouldn’t be able to come. Thankfully this didn’t happen.

All went to plan in the morning. My hair did what it was meant to do. I didn’t wake up with a massive spot on my chin and there was no freak Saturday morning traffic jam. We arrived early and met our family outside. Although I still had no idea what to expect once we got inside and it came to the ceremony!

One of the women who worked in the registry office met us and our guests at the door and Mark and I were taken into a waiting room to talk to the registrar while everyone else got seated. She then told us how the ceremony would run and let Mark set up the music we would walk in to.

I was a bag of nerves despite it only being closest family and my best friend. During the ceremony, I actually giggled a couple of times – nervous giggles. I was so worried I would stumble over my words! It seemed to be over in a blur and before I knew it she was saying we were husband and wife and that Mark could kiss me.

After the ceremony and the signing of legal documents, we were told we could spend some time in the room and take photos. This was an amazing and unexpected surprise, I thought as soon as it was done we would be out and saying bye to everyone. But having that extra time with our people was really nice. Everyone was taking photos and I did feel a bit like Barbie at the end of Toy Story – my cheeks were aching! Haha!

I asked on Instagram if anyone had any questions about planning a wedding during covid. Here’s what people wanted to know:

Let’s see more pics of your ring

Haha! See above. I LOVE my wedding set so much! Both are platinum and were made by Karen Johnston. My engagement ring is a morganite, which comes in a blush or salmon colour. Mark’s (for anyone interested) is a really simple band made from titanium. He didn’t want anything too shiny and was also looking for something pretty hardwearing.

How did your covid wedding differ from your planned wedding?

We were already planning a really small wedding, but not quite as small as we ended up having. Because of covid restrictions, we couldn’t do anything afterwards with the people who were there on the day. So after the ceremony, everyone just had to go their own way. It also made me really sad we couldn’t hug our parents on the day. And if the situation was different I would have wanted my Dad to walk me into the room.

Did you have to compromise on the amount of guests?

Yeah, we did. At first, when we decided to do the legal bit this year, I was all for it just being Mark and I and our witnesses. Turned out our parents were having none of it. Because we were only allowed 14 people it meant leaving some people out. My parents are divorced and both remarried, so I have four parents. I did manage to have grandparents there too but no siblings (I have six!). Mark has a much smaller family and his brother was one of the witnesses so most of his closest were there.

It felt sad not to have my brothers and sisters there but it wasn’t anything more than a ceremony and we’ll get to celebrate with them at a later point.

Our lockdown wedding was small, but perfect.

Getting married in 2020 in the midst of a pandemic was surreal. We had to wear masks during the ceremony! And even though it wasn’t the wedding we were originally planning, it turned out to be the perfect day for us.

An introverts dream really. I used to joke that when I got married I wanted to do it in a registry office and be back at home eating pizza and drinking beer on the sofa with Mark. Our day wasn’t far from this. We spent most of our wedding day together and had a lovely night in a hotel after it. For me, it’s the actually being married that’s important rather than having a big party.

In all honesty, we still don’t know what will happen in 2021. We don’t know if we will end up getting round 2 for the date we’ve planned. It’s seeming less and less likely that things will be in a much better state next year. And who knows when what we considered normal at the start of this year will become our reality again. But if plans do need to change again it won’t be such a blow because we’re already legally husband and wife.

Our proper wedding photos were taken by Matthew Johnston, a photographer based in Fife. Getting a photographer was such a great decision, it’s so nice to have relaxed candid photos of both of us and Matthew was great!