`For us, it was perfect'
In a pandemic wedding trend, couples are turning to Zoom elopements
The cake was from Costco, the food was Italian takeout, the venue was the couple's Oak Park, Illinois, family room.
Jessica and Jason Jaffrey got married on New Year's Eve with no guests, other t han her two school-age daughters from a previous marriage, and a close friend who agreed to officiate via Zoom.
The 15- minute ceremony was followed by a Champagne toast and phone calls to family and friends.
“It was really nice, I have to say,” said Jessica Jaffrey, 44, a women's health nurse practitioner. “We could just enjoy each other and not have to worry about DJs, and food, and not saying `hi' to everyone. For us, it was perfect.”
Zoom elopements, in which the guest list is pared down to nearly zero, are on the rise during the pandemic, Brides. com editorial director Roberta Correia said. She said elopements are in keeping with the better-known microwedding trend, in which the couple invite up to 10 guests for an in-person ceremony and everyone else attends via Zoom.
“If anything, the pandemic has made people want to get married faster; it's `I want that person in the lifeboat with me. I want to start this partnership right now,'” Correia said.
The 2020 Brides American Wedding Study found the C OVID -19 pandemic increased the desire to get married for 82% of newlyweds, with 81% of newlyweds saying COVID- 1 9 changed their expectations for their wedding.
Corrie a sum med up the situation with a line from the movie “When Harry Met Sally”:
“When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.”
At the beginning of 2020, the Jaffreys were planning a low-key destination wedding with sand, surf and sun for their active, blended family, which includes their four children from previous marriages: her daughters, Maya and Delaney Cherikos, 15 and 12; and his sons, Matthew and Connor Jaffrey, 14 and 10.
When COVID-19 made that impossible, they switched to Plan B: a late-summer or early fall rooftop wedding for 50. When the pandemic raged on, they briefly considered Plan C: a Las Vegas elopement.
By mid-December, that didn't seem safe either. The Jaffreys formulated Plan D, a courthouse wedding, only to discover there was a twomonth waiting period to be married by a judge.
And then, there was the fifth and final plan. New Year's was approaching, and with it, the end of 2020.
“We just kind of realized, `Let's do it,'” said Jason, 47, a sales manager for a media company .“It had been a
crummy year for a lot of people, and we just wanted to cap it off with something that was special to us.”
Plan E was a Zoom elopement, with the couple's good friend, Megan Keen an ,39, of Oklahoma City, as the officiant.
TheJaf frey shad about a week and a half to plan a Dec. 31 ceremony. Jessica's daughters did the decorations with balloons and streamers. Jessica wore a work dress and Jason wore a blue buttondown shirt.
The ceremony itself, held shortly afternoon, lasted about 15 minutes.
“There were so many wonderful things that they were already doing and already committed to that were in progress ,” Keen an said. “What a beautiful foundation to move a marriage forward, with all those things.”
Their love story
Jason and Jessica met on an online dating site in October 2014.
“I'm not gonna lie,” he said. “I fell in love with her beauty before I met her in person. But also, we had a very long courting period of a couple weeks before we met, where we were texting.”
She used to say ,“I'm a hoot,” he said, and she was. He fell in love with her humor, her quirkiness, her wit, her sweetness and her intelligence.
She re members dr ivin gd own the Eisenhower Expressway with him, after
that we have the greatest populations of robins in the dead of winter. Part of this can be explained by the fact that the northern birds escape winter by coming down to Oklahoma in order to wait out the fierceness of the brutal winter that is to be found up north.
I n addition to this, central Oklahoma has a very ample supply of food items for the robins' dietary needs.
For those of us here in central Oklahoma, you would do well to consult the calendar on the kitchen wall. It is a much more reliable indicator of the approach of winter's end.