Nikki and Jake were just one of many of my sweet 2020 couples with weddings wrecked by the coronavirus pandemic. I’m sure so many people can relate - the daily disintegration, details falling away one by one, venues and other vendors doing their best to hang on to some semblance of the original plan while following guidelines and trying to predict the future, everyone trying to remain positive and optimistic until finally….reality, and a final call being made.
I am totally awed by the resilience, creativity and triumphant love that has backboned all of my 2020 “weddings.” While a few have simply rescheduled, most have become my favorite scheme-mates - deciding to elope, taking over their parent’s backyard, switching to a courthouse visit paired with an epic mountain romp….funnily enough, Nikki and Jake ALWAYS planned on getting married on a boat. They were social distancing masters before it was even hot.
This day filled me right up in a number of ways. One, I was worried I would never get to work again. And I like to work. So that was fun. But more importantly, getting to safely steal away on a boat for an afternoon and capture such bubbly joy (not just talking about the canned champagne) in the sunshine of my sleepy hometown is my dream workday, in or out of a global pandemic!
But what really filled me to the brim happened while driving Nikki and Jake up the road to take some gorgeous portraits - I put them six feet away from me in the back of my van, windows open, mask on, and watched them in the rear-view mirror for a second as we drove. I had some nerves going into the day, because I am an empath and just absorb everyone’s feelings (a blessing and a curse), and was worried that because the day wasn’t the wedding they had planned, there would be some bummed-out-ness to balance. But Nikki and Jake were in the backseat just bursting with joy, talking about how perfect it had all been. The boat, the weather, the Friend Flotilla. Nikki even expressed that the day was probably a better experience than a full wedding would have been. There, in the late afternoon sun, looking out at Liberty Bay under the Olympic mountains, I couldn’t imagine anything better, either. See for yourselves.
