I wanted to be a hero in these troublesome times. Now I’m just another bride throwing a tantrum over the right nuance of the wedding decorations.
June 1st should have been my wedding day. My fiancé and I have been together for almost 8 years and we were oh so ready. We had all figured out: a nice, intimate wedding (well, as intimate as an Italian wedding can be) on a terrace looking out to the beach in Sicily. June 1st was specifically chosen: it would have been a nice summer day, not too hot but sunny and warm. My parents helped us out financially and with the logistics, given that we live in a different part of Italy, his family bought my wedding dress and my fiancé’s suit, everyone had their outfits and their plane tickets ready and it would have been a lovely long weekend with friends and family. It was all ready, except for some little details and a pair of documents we needed. Then coronavirus happened and Italy was suddenly a different place to live.
It was February 22nd, exactly 100 days to our wedding and we were beyond excited. We had just been to the town hall to start the legal procedures, we had planned a trip to Milan to mark the occasion, we were happy. That same day, though, the first person died from coronavirus in our region and a few people tested positive near Milan. Suddenly, it all seemed a bit silly. A city break, wedding plans, white flowy dresses didn’t seem to be so important after all. People were dying. And they went on dying and they are still dying, though the situation is a lot more manageable now. But the last few months were atrocious here in Italy. The number of victims went up and up and up and it seemed like the end of the world. Literally.
I’m chronically ill so, in order to avoid putting my life at risk, I spent three months isolated in my house. My boyfriend was going to work every day and I was terrified that he would catch the virus. The streets were empty, TV and newspapers gave daily counts of dead and infected people. People from Civil Protection were driving down the streets of our town urging citizens to stay home and go out only if really necessary. Shops and restaurant, schools and churches were shut down. It didn’t seem to be the right time for a wedding. Or maybe it was.
You know in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part I, when Ginny says “It seems silly, doesn’t it? A wedding. Given everything that’s going on…” and Harry replies “Maybe that’s the best reason to have it”? I know, movies’ Harry and Ginny are not the best couple out there, but I always find this exchange deep and I thought about it a lot during those days. It seemed silly, a wedding, given everything that was going on. But maybe that was the best reason to have it. People I love tested positive and I was so scared, I watched all these people dying in hospitals without their loved ones because of the restrictions. They couldn’t even have a funeral. Bodies were transferred from a city to another because there were too many. I thought about death a lot in those months. I thought about life, too. I wanted to celebrate it, with all its difficulties and challenges, with my illness and the uncertainty of my freelance job. At least, we were alive. At least, we had each other. At least, we loved each other. It felt like the only thing in the world. Me and him. I felt guilty about my very selfish thoughts but at the same time… I wanted to be the hero of my own story. I wanted us to be the couple who loved each other so much even a pandemic couldn’t stop them.
My fiancé didn’t agree. A wedding with face masks, without our friends and families, without nice outfits and a beautiful party seemed sad to him. And I didn’t want him to feel sad about such an important day in our lives. We started talking options, different locations, different settings, different dates. Nothing seemed to be okay for us both and our families. So in the end, we postponed our wedding day till next year. I looked like I was okay with the decision, but I was fuming inside. I felt like I was losing everything: my job, my money, my health were more precarious than ever, my family and friends were far away. The only thing I had was him and our love and our own family waiting to be.
In the end, June 1st was our wedding day. Just not a real one. I chose a nice natural backdrop on the river bank, I put a lovely outfit and a flower crown on, I commissioned a mini wedding cake and we celebrated our pagan non-wedding, Game of Thrones style. Like Robb and Talisa or Rhaegar and Lyanna. Both unfortunate couples, I know, but I find the vows so romantic and we’re both kind of nerds so it fit well for us. We tied our hands with a light blue ribbon and exchanged those lovely words “I’m his/hers and he/she is mine, from this day until the end of my days”. Then we ate our wedding cake. It was sweet. It was a celebration of our love and our life together, with the intimate and romantic feeling of being alone in the entire world. But it wasn’t our wedding.
We won’t be husband and wife until next year, and that still makes me sad. I will have my beautiful dress, my friends and family celebrating us, a funny and messy party on the Sicilian terrace and, most of all, I will have him by my side. But I won’t be the hero of these troublesome times. I’ll be just another bride throwing a tantrum because the decorations are not the right nuance of blue. Funny, maybe, but not heroic in the least.
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