To have and to hold on a while longer: What we did on our non-wedding day

'I had to keep busy to avoid getting upset'

By Estelle Keeber

Packing our lives into boxes wasn’t exactly how I expected to be spending our wedding day. But preparing to move house, dressed in sweatshirt and jogging bottoms, still signalled the start of a new chapter, albeit in a somewhat less glamorous way.

Chris and I were due to marry in Cyprus on May 14. When I woke that morning the relief I’d felt since the end of April - when, after weeks of uncertainty, our flights and hotel accommodation were finally cancelled and refunded - temporarily segued into disappointment.

I knew I had to keep busy to avoid getting upset, and was up at 7am replying to work emails, instead of treating myself to a wedding day lie in. Thankfully, after that, we had plenty to do. We’d brought our move to rented accommodation in my son’s intended new school’s catchment area forward after our wedding was cancelled, and Chris had taken the week off work to help empty shelves and cupboards.

Every now and then we stopped to imagine what we’d be doing were we getting married. Would I be hiding from Chris so he didn’t see my dress? Would we be lounging by the infinity pool at the villa we’d hired instead of liaising with removal men?

We’d chosen to go abroad because we’d wanted an intimate wedding, with only us and our four children, and it made us laugh that because of lockdown it was just the six of us together anyway. The children, who we had in previous relationships, were disappointed not to be witnessing our wedding, but understood this didn’t change our love for each other.

After lunch, we walked the dog in a local beauty spot – an entirely unexceptional activity, but one that reminded us it’s the simple things we share that make our relationship special.

By evening, after sharing on Facebook that I should have been getting married, I’d received 400 lovely messages that made the day easier to get through. When my nan called she worried I wouldn’t want to talk about what should have been, but while I didn’t want to make a big deal of it, I didn’t feel as down I’d expected.

I know our time will come. For now, though, the £6,000 we’ve had refunded will go towards a deposit on a new house that we’d never have been able to afford otherwise. I went to bed feeling happy and hopeful that, after a turbulent few weeks, we were looking to the future again.

As told to Antonia Hoyle

'Catching up with loved ones instantly lifted our spirits on a difficult day'

By Ben Coles

My fiancée, Lucy – known to friends as ‘Meg’ or, occasionally, ‘Megatron’ – and I got the news we were dreading on March 15, less than three weeks from the day of our would-be wedding: South African president Cyril Ramaphosa declaring a national state of disaster and travel ban on all visitors from the UK. As all our guests (and we) wouldn’t be able to go overseas, it meant our wedding on April 4, due to be held at a stunning vineyard an hour from Cape Town, was off. We were crushed.

But that didn’t mean we were unable to celebrate on the big day. The days after cancellation were filled with touching moments of generosity and sympathy from our guests, and then, on what would have been our celebration, we realised that Lucy’s bridesmaids had sneakily been arranging something special.

Staged as a small catch-up for Lucy and the bridesmaids, we joined a Zoom call to instead see a massive group of cheering friends all dressed in formal wedding attire – including one prominent, screen-popping top hat. Our Master of Ceremonies then piped up with an excellent toast, before we ran off to get a bit more dressed up for the occasion (we were in shorts and t-shirts).

Champagne was opened, canapes were eaten, hymns were sung, readings were given, entrance and exit music had been organised... somebody had even created and shared an order of service. And to top it off, the start of the call featured a vicar – the father of one of our bridesmaids – who provided us with a blessing.

No actual vows were made and nothing official was declared, as we still plan to get married for real in the near future, but being able to spend a few hours catching up with loved ones instantly lifted our spirits on a difficult day. As for the rest of it, well there was more champagne, other Zoom calls with family, and then another surprise with a different group of friends (no clergy present this time). Takeaway pizza replaced our wedding breakfast, although that was a nice throwback to our engagement in New York, where we did the same.

By the end of it we were exhausted, but so heartwarmed that people had made all that effort. Our eventual wedding day will be special, perhaps even more so after all the drama and disruption, but on what could have been a grim date for us in April, the love of friends and family – with a little help from Zoom – saved the day.

Ben Coles is a rugby reporter for the Telegraph

'We blared out music from our phones and shrieked the lyrics'

By Anna Silverman

My fiancé Adrian and I were meant to marry on May 2 in Sussex. But instead of wallowing in self-pity at our comparatively boring day at home, we decided to go all out - okay, applying mascara and blow-drying my hair - which, as lockdown goes, felt exhilarating. It wasn’t the best day of our lives, but given getting dressed and having a shower warrants a celebration at the moment, it was still fun.

The initial novelty quickly wore off when we sat on the sofa at midday with a glass of champagne and remembered this was as good as it was going to get. Until, that is, a few glasses later, we decided to wander the streets with the vague intention of waving at my brother who lives nearby, and having a socially-distanced drink at the end of their drive.

I put on my veil (why not?), grabbed some champagne our friends had sent us to drown our sorrows, and we set off. It turns out a bride-and groom-to-be on their would-be wedding day bear a striking resemblance to annoying teenagers at the back of a bus: we blared out music from our phones and shrieked the lyrics to the song that would have played during our first dance, while sipping straight from the bottle.

Some passers-by told us to do one, but mostly people shouted their congratulations at us, with a number of them asking whether we’d married that morning. (Perhaps the small matter of the pandemic had somehow passed them by.)

When we arrived back home later, my fiancé presented me with the best wedding gift of all: an enormous, bakery-bought chocolate gateau that he’d somehow hidden at the back of the fridge. It was like being proposed to all over again; possibly even better.

Then, our friends sent us a link to an impressively executed video they had made to mark our day. Each one of them dressed up and acted out side-splittingly funny imitations of mine and Adrian’s life and relationship. The evening was a blur of laughter and chatter as we watched it on repeat and Zoomed our families.

We may have had to postpone our wedding until next year, but our original wedding date had all the hallmarks of the real thing: dancing; being drunk by lunchtime; and a couple left bursting with love and gratitude for each other and the people in their lives. And no one needed to know I single-handedly polished off the cake instead of sharing it with 130 guests.

Anna Silverman is the deputy features editor at Grazia magazine