A socially distanced real wedding

NOTE: The best way to stop the spread of COVID-19 is to practise social distancing and not host gatherings. This couple and their friends/family maintained their distance and stayed safe. Today’s Bride does not recommend social gatherings. Stay home!

For the last five and a half months, Anastasija Apanasova and Joshua Davis had been planning their dream wedding in Maple Ridge, BC. As their April 3, 2020 date got closer, and the COVID-19 pandemic began to take over, the couple started making other plans.

The couple knew that hosting their 135-person wedding would be unsafe, so they cancelled their big venue plans and made the decision to cut the guest list to 50 and host a backyard wedding under tents. And as time went on and the situation changed, even this became impossible.

“To say how we felt in one word isn’t enough,” says Anastasia. “We felt pain for not being able to celebrate our day with the people we love so much, anger that it was happening right before our wedding, frustration of not knowing what to do next and what  our plan Bs and Cs could be, fear in a way that we might not get married anytime soon. Lots of mixed emotions. It hurt so much, especially knowing that we’ve been to about four or five weddings of our friends in the last year and they had their perfect dream weddings, followed by an awesome getaway honeymoon. And everything we had planned (including our honeymoon) had to be cancelled.”

Heartbroken, the couple came to a realization. Anastasija says, “After understanding we couldn’t even host a backyard wedding of 50 people, we had realized that [the wedding day] is just a date in the calendar that could be moved to either a later or an earlier time. We loved each other and wanted to start our lives together. We didn’t know what would happen in a month, a week or even tomorrow, but we knew that we had each other.”

And so, a new date was set: March 22. Inside the home of Joshua’s parents, the couple exchanged vows, witnessed by their best man and maid of honour.

A limo drove the foursome to a location to take a few photos. Inside the limo, the best man instructed the couple to roll down the window. And that’s when the got the biggest surprise: their loved ones were lining the street in (or on) their cars. At a safe distance from one another, of course.

“We started to hear the honking, cheering, laughter – and it just felt so unreal,” says Anastasija. “Josh and I started crying as we realized that all of these people that were lined up were all of our friends from our church that we could not invite to our wedding. We came out of the limo and started walking down the street as everyone cheered, laughed, and honked. It was so magical, it felt so amazing. We felt so loved and cared for by our friends. It is exactly what we needed on that day – our friends and their support, their presence to celebrate our special day.”

Everyone in the cars tuned their radios to the same station so the couple could share a first dance in the middle of the street. The song? “Why I Love You” by Major.

While the newlyweds couldn’t dance with anyone else, hug or even shake hands, just having them show their support truly made their day. They have no plans to host a formal reception at a later date, but might host a backyard BBQ just to reflect on the memories of the day.

“Having all of our friends join us on our day – it made it absolutely perfect and we would not be wanting to ‘re-do’ our wedding in any way,” says Anastasija.

NOTE: The best way to stop the spread of COVID-19 is to practise social distancing and not host gatherings. This couple and their friends/family maintained their distance and stayed safe. Today’s Bride does not recommend social gatherings. Stay home!