For the past 4 months, couples have been postponing their wedding because of COVID. MG & Jason were one of the first of my couples to push their wedding to 2021. But not long after came back to let me know they decided to have a mini wedding at MG’s parent back courtyard in Richmond. It was to be in front of their parents and MG’s brother. A simple ceremony followed by some dinner and cake.
What we couldn’t have expected was 1. How impactful COVID was going to be and 2. Richmond would be one of the centers of the Black Lives Matter movement. If you’re not familiar, Richmond was the capital of the confederacy and center of the large confederate monuments.
And amongst all this – the global pandemic, the new era of civil rights and BLM, these two families came together to get married – to have a wedding. It’s a powerful thing to watch two people, two families, come together, for love, to get married, during a time like this. And perhaps the hopeful, the most powerful signal of these two families and their wedding was how they opened their door to what is happening. How they embraced it and made it part of the wedding.
I imagine for me, one of the most impactful and memorable moments of 2020 will be seeing MG’s dad, as the father of the bride, putting a mask on his daughter, and hugging her before the ceremony began.
Enjoy the photos, and we’ll see much more from these two in 2021!
