Abigail Smith married Gregory Goodman on June 12, 2021, at St. Patrick’s Catholic Church in LaSalle. They both grew up in the Illinois Valley area and now live in Champaign. “My favorite part (of the wedding) was being able to bring our friends and family together after the pandemic had kept us all apart for so long,” Abigail Goodman said. “Everyone kept saying how it was the first event since Covid had started that they attended. It almost felt like a celebration of not only our marriage, but also a glimmer of hope that we were finally getting back to some ‘normalcy’ since March of 2020.” CONTRIBUTED PHOTO/ LEX POULAKOS PHOTOGRAPHY
2022 is the Year of the Weddings The pandemic can’t stop love, but it does make planning a trip down the aisle harder
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When Lexie Leach of Spring Valley began planning her Oct. 9, 2021, wedding to fiancé Tony Sickley, she was surprised to learn that finding vendors wasn’t going to be easy. Couples had put off their weddings for so long in 2020 and early 2021 that there was a backlog of people wanting to get married. “When we first started wedding planning, we didn’t take into consideration the amount of people who had to resched-
ule their wedding due to the pandemic,” she said. “A lot of vendors were already booked so it was challenging trying to find some of them.” They were able to secure Cedar Creek Ranch in Cedar Point for their wedding venue. “We’ve known the family for years, and I have seen the different wedding styles they have had out there, and there wasn’t one that I didn’t think looked beautiful. It was a very laid-back wedding and
8 January 2022 | Illinois Valley Weddings | A Shaw Media Publication
it was perfect for us,” Lexie Sickley said. Despite the difficulty in finding vendors, the wedding went off without a hitch, with approximately 150 people in attendance, despite a few not making it because of the pandemic. Racheal Robertson of Spring Valley also ran into a few scheduling issues because of the pandemic when planning her April 2021 wedding at Grand Bear Lodge to
