How I Got Through This

Getting Married in a Pandemic Helped Me Get Through This Year

In a year of uncertainty, at least we could take control of our marriage

Sarah Begley
GEN
Published in
4 min readDec 22, 2020

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Photo illustration; source image courtesy of the author

My husband and I weren’t alone in having to choose between postponing our big autumn wedding because of the pandemic, or becoming one of those viral (pun intended) news stories about selfish couples hosting superspreader events. We chose the former. It was an easy decision, made easier by having plenty of company in the same boat, including friends with wedding dates around the same time who I could text regularly: “Did you decide yet? What is your band saying? Does your family get it?”

It also helped that it was a slow-motion decision process: An October party, indoors in New York City, went from possible to questionable to laughable over the course of the spring. By the summer, we had already negotiated with our venue and vendors to push our party from October to a new date in 2021. All that remained to do was decide if we would still get legally married this year.

We decided to go for it, partly to keep our original anniversary date of October 3 — which we now share with the Obamas, thank you very much — and partially since it seemed unclear whether we would even be able to go forward with our 2021 date…

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GEN
GEN

Published in GEN

A former publication from Medium about politics, power, and culture. Currently inactive and not taking submissions.

Sarah Begley
Sarah Begley

Written by Sarah Begley

Director at Medium working with authors and books. Formerly a staff writer and editor at Time.