Wishes weddings do come true–eventually

feature: Wishes weddings do come true—eventually

HOW EDITING THIS MAGAZINE FOR SEVEN YEARS HELPED ONE 2020 BRIDE NAVIGATE HER PANDEMIC WEDDING

LOGAN SWAYZE

by: ALYSSA NOEL

Here’s one perk of editing this magazine that no one tells you about: when your turn comes to plan a wedding, you already know every vendor and venue from Squamish to Pemberton inside out.

Little did I know just how much this would come in handy as a 2020 bride.

Our Plan A wedding (with deposits secured at the tail end of 2020, before the C word turned our world upside down) went something like this: a forest ceremony at Squamish’s Sunwolf resorts where our nearest and dearest would stay in cute on-site cabins, dance the night away under a tent with a clear roof and smattering of lights, then cap off the perfect day with a massive campfire.

From dark wood harvest tables to gold candleholders woven through table greenery, even the details were set.

Then along came March.

By May we realized this pandemic would not be short lived and postponed our July wedding to the same date in 2021.

But in the meantime, we longed to get on with life. So, drawing from seven years of writing about Wishes weddings, we hatched several plans for several scenarios.

They ranged from gathering our close local friends, hiking up a mountain outside Pemberton and getting married in the picturesque alpine, to having our parents (who were all desperate to come) self-isolate for two weeks in Alberta and join us for the big day as our sole guests.

In the end, July’s numbers were low enough that the latter option was possible. I reached out to North Arm Farm, one of the most stunning venues in the Pemberton Valley, to see if they were offering elopement packages and, sure enough, they had a reasonable option for weddings under 10 people.

From there, we scouted a spot deep in their fields, underneath Mount Currie, for the ceremony, used some of our existing vendors—Natacha Trottier for hair and make up, A Fox in the Flowers for bouquets and the arch, Linda Marshall as the wedding planner, and Tracy Kerr as our officiant—and recruited a few new ones as well, namely Logan Swayze for photos and Calling Mountains Productions to both livestream the ceremony to everyone at home and produce a video we could show the following year.

All of them were wonderful, but, in all honesty, it was not the best day of my life. Countless things went wrong—from the oppressive heat and mosquitoes to our misbehaved, but adorable dog. And, still, it stings that some of the people closest to us weren’t there to celebrate.

But, in the end, I don’t regret it. My dad walked me down the aisle, my mom served as my maid of honour and my wonderful in-laws made the day special. The meal was particularly memorable and I cherish our stunning photos and video with all my heart.

And, in the end, there was one perfect moment during the ceremony. My mom and my father-in-law were serving as our witnesses and signing our marriage certificate, leaving my husband and I standing off to the side to finally just breathe for a moment and take in the scene around us. Van Morrison’s “Sweet Thing” swelled on the little speaker and, in the same moment, we seemed to recognize both the feat we pulled off and the event we were in the midst of that would forever change the course of our lives.

Now, nine months after that day, I can say I’m truly glad we did it—and pushed our reception, still at Sunwolf, back one more year.

Not only will this 2022 party mark our two-year wedding anniversary and the first birthday of our first child (due this July), but hopefully it will also be a chance to celebrate the end of a global pandemic that has kept us all apart for far too long.

LOGAN SWAYZE