Wedding off so pair have lockdown celebration
WITH a date for their wedding booked like other soon-to-be newlyweds, Tim Pasley and Julia Coles were gutted when the coronavirus pandemic put their plans on hold.
With the special date already put on repeat in the diary of their phones, they decided they would not let lockdown stop them celebrating what would have been their wedding day.
Making the most of the May bank holiday weekend’s sun, Tim and Julia decided they would mark the day by staging a fake wedding.
Julia, who is a project manager in film, is a keen photographer, having studied photography and trained in the profession over the years.
She has worked on a few weddings to produce videos for couples, but has never done a self shot like this.
“We just had a creative itch that we needed to scratch,” said pre-construction manager Tim.
The Cardiff couple, who got engaged in 2019 on a trip to Venice during the worst flooding the city has ever seen, joked that it was doomed from the start for that reason, but have moved their wedding date to October and hope they can finally tie the knot then.
Tim, 38, said: “We wanted to do something to mark the day, so we had a shower, got ready and took some pictures of each other, started drinking and picked up the camera throughout the day.”
Julia, 34, said: “Because I have worked at weddings, we knew the staging and the shots that photographers usually go for, so us getting ready, walking down the ‘aisle,’ in the garden.
“It was really funny, there are so many photos of just Tim’s hand or something because we did it on self-timer.”
They started the day by staging some shots of them getting ready, before walking down the aisle and saying “I do”.
Tim decorated a plain white-iced fruit cake with a cut-out, and wrote on the cake “lockdown wedding”.
The day before, he even had a special delivery from his best man, at a social distance, of a cigar to light in groomsman tradition.
The couple also staged wedding speeches and an evening party, admitting the day was just as exhausting as the real thing would be.
While Julia has already got her wedding dress and bridesmaid dress picked out, she opted to wear something different so as not to spoil it for the real big day.
Tim, who hadn’t got round to buying his suit yet, joked he would hopefully be able to get a haircut before October.
For any other couples missing out on their wedding because of restrictions, Julia said to give what they did a go and have some fun with it.
“If you think about the shots you would usually see from weddings and copy that, it is quite a fun thing to do as a couple,” said Julia.
Continuing their “fake wedding” celebrations, the couple also hosted a virtual wedding-themed quiz on Friday, May 8 with their friends, who all showed up in their wedding outfits.
They did the same the following day with their family, and despite them not officially being married yet, they had a wedding day to remember.