Three Weddings, One Year

Three Daughters Three Weddings

(all in the midst of Covid)

It’s been hard enough to plan a wedding in the last two years, thanks to Covid, but try planning three in just one of those years. That’s what the Mandragouras family did. Over the months, they dealt with postponements, 11thhour venue changes, a ceremony in pajamas, and a hurricane. And that’s just part of the story.

Sheila and George

Meet Sheila and George Mandragouras, the parents who shepherded their three daughters — Julie, age, 33, Andrea, age 30, and Emily, age 28 — through the whirlwind of planning three weddings in one year, with Covid lurking all the while.

During that year, the Hollis couple learned that, as Sheila says, “If you have to plan a wedding the week before, it can be done.” And that was just one of the lessons learned in those stressful months. Each daughter married in a different phase of the pandemic, so each had different hurdles to overcome, some of them formidable. Emily, the youngest, had it the easiest, getting married this past July, when Covid took a brief break and life was something like normal.

With the sisters being maids or matrons of honor in each other’s weddings, that added many hands to the family effort to make the weddings happen and to support each other along the way. “It was stressful for all of us,” Sheila says.

Covid, of course, was the biggest stressor, always present in the planning. “I felt very responsible as the host to make sure the guests were safe,” she says. The fact that she was a nurse made doing that easier. Despite that, she says, “I held my breath for two weeks after the weddings.”

George agrees that it was a challenge. “On top of trying to be really safe,” he says, “we wanted to make it a special day for our daughters. My job was to support them, and their mother, by getting through all the changes, making sure that everything was going to be OK.”

Amid the whirlwind, there was also much joy. Three daughters, three weddings, all in one year. George says they were “really wonderful weddings” despite the challenges. Sheila says she always tried to keep in mind that “everyone was healthy, and they were marrying three good guys. I kept saying, ‘In the end, this is all good.’” 

Julie and Alex

Julie, the oldest daughter, married Alex Korda on January 2, 2021. A joyous occasion, for sure, but the path they had traveled to get to that day was especially steep and full of sharp turns.

Her dream wedding was a big wedding, with great food, great band, great fun, at a beautiful place. And so it would be — invitations went out to more than 100 people for a March 2021 wedding at The Beauport, an elegant seaside hotel in Gloucester, Massachusetts.

But, in the fall of 2020, Covid cases began to spike, and it became evident that the March wedding with the dozens of guests wasn’t going to happen. The dream wedding was canceled, replaced with a much smaller wedding at a different venue, The Ledger, also in Massachusetts, with a date of January 2, 2021. “My husband and I decided we weren’t going to put our lives on hold,” Julie says. That she had become pregnant also factored in.

So, again, they picked a menu, picked a cake, and all the rest. But, alas, it was not to be. On December 23, 2020, just nine days before the wedding, the Massachusetts governor imposed Covid restrictions on the number of people allowed at venues. “With the restrictions, I could probably have had 10 people max in that room,” Julie says. “At that point, you’re talking about cutting one set of aunts and uncles, and you can’t do it.”

So, again, they canceled. Just nine days before the wedding. Fortunately, with probably 15 minutes to spare, Julie says, her sister Emily snagged the very last room available for the January 2nd date at the Bedford Village Inn in Bedford, New Hampshire.

So, again, they picked a menu, picked a cake, and all the rest. “I think we picked a menu within 15 minutes, on the phone,” Julie says. “At that point, when you’re picking your third menu within seven months, you’re not paying as much attention to the details.”

There was one more sharp turn to navigate. The wedding license was issued in Massachusetts, so it wasn’t valid in New Hampshire, where the wedding was to be. “It was one of those if-it-can-go-wrong-it-will situations,” Julie says. The solution? A justice of the peace married Julie and Alex at their Massachusetts home the morning of the wedding day, with Julie still in her pajamas, and her parents, their only witnesses, dressed in jeans and plaid shirts. “It was probably the least romantic wedding ceremony ever,” Julie says.

But all’s well that ends well. Later that day, in a beautiful room all decked out for Christmas, the family gathered to celebrate. First, though, there was another, much more romantic, ceremony, with Julie’s sister Andrea performing as unofficial officiant. It wasn’t the dream wedding Julie had hoped for (“you’re missing people you wish were part of your big day”) and it had been stressful leading up to it (“I can’t sugarcoat that”), but she’s grateful it turned out as well as it did, and that it was done. 

Andrea and Evan

Andrea, the second oldest, was supposed to be the first among the sisters to get married. As it turned out, she would be the last, again thanks to Covid.

Shortly after their engagement, Andrea and her husbandto-be Evan Costa set the date for October 24, 2020, at The Mansion at the Hellenic Center, a historic Georgian-style mansion on the North Shore. More than 100 save-the-datecards were sent out, and she bought a dress that would suit the crisp air of late autumn. Then, as she says, “life went on.”

Fast-forward to March 2020. “Covid hit, and the world changed,” she says. There was worry that her elderly grandparents and others might be at risk, so the October wedding was canceled. That meant working with the venue and their vendors to find a new date. The only one that worked was September 11, 2021. “Obviously, September 11th was not our immediate first choice, but we wanted it in the fall and there were minimal dates left,” Andrea says. One good thing about it — it was the day they had started dating, and it marked the five-year anniversary of that.

The new date meant new plans. Andrea says, “You are more or less planning a second wedding because everything you planned for has changed.” Everything including the prices, which had dramatically increased because of Covid. And then, there was her dress, perfect for crisp autumn air but not for the heat and humidity of late summer. To lighten it a bit, she had a few layers cut out of the skirt.

But then … “The world went from we-think-this-is-all-over to we’re-blowing-up-again,” Andrea says. As late summer approached, the July lull in Covid cases ended as the Delta variant surfaced. Despite that, she says, “We knew we were getting married come hell or high water. It was happening.”

The new reality of another Covid surge meant some guests would decide not to come, so they had to reach out to everyone to see who was or wasn’t attending. Plus, changes would be needed for both the church ceremony and the reception to make it safe for those who did come. For the church ceremony, the number of people was reduced from everyone who had been invited to family only. For the reception, it was moved from inside the mansion to outside in a tent.

But then … They found that a local requirement meant outdoor parties with music had to end at 10 p.m. “That meant moving the entire timeline of the reception,” Andrea says.

At the same time, they had been keeping an eye on the weather, a new concern because the reception was now outside and the wedding dress had been chosen for late fall, not late summer. “The week before, it was in the upper 90s and very humid,” Andrea says.

Happily, though, the day was beautiful. “It wasn’t too hot, it wasn’t too humid,” she says. “We lucked out.” Finally. 

The charmed child” — that’s how Emily’s mother describes her youngest. And, indeed, it seems so.

While her sisters were dealing with one obstacle after the other in planning their weddings, Emily and her husband-to-be Jeremy Wise picked a date that was right in the middle of the only month in the pandemic with few Covid cases. Plus, everyone was vaccinated by then, further reducing the risk.

So, on July 10, 2021, Emily had her dream wedding — small, about 50 people, but beautiful — at the Salem Country Club in Peabody, Massachusetts. Adding to the wonderfulness, another wish fulfilled — lots of dancing, worry-free dancing. “It was nice not having to be super concerned, and just to have fun without having to wear a mask,” Emily says. “I danced the whole night.”

It wasn’t a complete breeze though. There was a hurricane, Hurricane Elsa, that threatened it all. The country club was in its path, set to arrive the weekend of the wedding. “Everything else was going too well,” Emily says. But her good fortune continued. By the time Elsa reached the Northeast, it had been degraded to a tropical storm, and it came and went on the Friday before the Saturday wedding. “It was crazy weather on Friday,” Emily says, “but fortunately Saturday was a beautiful day.”

Despite the sunshine on the wedding day, the grass was still wet from Elsa’s rains and likely to be so when the ceremony took place. Not ideal, and prompting last-minute thoughts of moving the ceremony. But, again, all was well. At her grandfather’s urging, country club staff used fans to dry out the grass, and the outdoor ceremony proceeded. The reception was indoors, so there were no worries about that.

What Covid-caused worries there had been mostly happened early on, when she was booking the wedding in September 2020. “It was stressful, booking it at that time and not being sure it could actually happen,” she says. And she worried about putting the guests at risk, because she didn’t know then that July would be the safest of all the many months of the pandemic.

“I didn’t have to re-plan anything, or plan three weddings like my sister,” Emily says. “It all ended up being fine.” 