7 Things to Tell Yourself If COVID Crashed Your Dream Wedding

3. You Agreed to Start Your Life Together Simply

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In many ways, you and your spouse settled for a simple wedding. And that indicates you both are willing to be content. That’s important in marriage. If you can be content with a scaled-down wedding because you simply wanted to be with one another, you’re more likely to be content with a scaled-down budget, a scaled-down home, and a scaled-down lifestyle, which amounts to less stress in a marriage.

Greg and Bonnie had planned a large wedding at the request of both of their families. “I had put so much work into coordinating everything – the flowers, cake, venue, cookie bar, dress,” Bonnie said. “It all took so much mental energy and so much time planning, that I was initially devastated when everything had to be canceled.”

But instead of rescheduling–and because they couldn’t even elope due to heightened travel restrictions in early May–they accepted an offer from a family friend (who was ordained) to marry them in her parents’ backyard. 

“My parents decorated their backyard for us, we wore more casual wedding attire, and got married under my childhood gazebo,” Bonnie said. “It was so beautiful and intimate. I got to marry the man I love dearly without the distraction of a large wedding. It was just good people and good food, and a whole lot of love that day. Plus, my mom made a cake that would blow any bakery out of the water!”

Shay experienced the joy of simplicity with her wedding planning, too.  “I always dreamed of having an expensive wedding dress and picking one out of dozens I would try on,” she said.

“But I ordered mine on Etsy and it fit like a glove. It helped me appreciate the simplicity of things. I didn’t have to sort through all the options, I could just lean into one and trust God with the results. Even when we ordered the wedding desserts, we thought Let’s just go with something simple that we don’t have to stress over and it turned out the simple things were what we wanted anyway and what our guests enjoyed the most.”

Photo Credit: ©Unsplash/Clarisse Meyer