‘Mutant strain’ has cancelled our wedding for the third time
After two attempts, Ian Winwood was confident of marrying in 2020, but then the rules changed again...
In years to come, we will ask each other, “Where were you when the Prime Minister torpedoed the plans of an entire nation?” In answer to this question, my fiancée and I will say that we were sitting in front of the telly, watching in goldfish-mouthed amazement as our wedding was cancelled at less than 24-hours’ notice.
My mum and stepfather were eating takeaway food in a hotel room in north London, 174 miles from their home in South Yorkshire. Along with her three sisters, my fiancée’s Mancunian parents were on a train bound for Euston, their first child’s wedding dress lovingly folded on an unoccupied seat by their side.
Some people were midair. One friend was travelling from New York, to see his recently widowed mother in south London. The wife and children of a pal up the street were halfway to Japan for a Christmas sojourn to family in Kyoto. In a fortnight’s time, will either party be allowed to return?
By all means, feel free to sing along. It really is quite the chorus of misery, isn’t it? Hundreds of thousands – millions, surely – of stories of chaos and rupture. Money spent, hopes raised, plans scotched. I do know that this is serious, and I have no quarrel with the decision that has been taken in light of the new strain of Covid. But its timing, and its manner? Not so much.
At dawn on Saturday, my fiancée was checking the news. It’s a nasty little habit we’ve picked up – what with our longed-for 2020 wedding having already been postponed and downsized twice. Sunday was to be our third attempt; a minimalist affair at a local pub, socially distanced, with guests sitting in their bubbles.
So confident was I that last week I wrote an article in this newspaper with the headline “We’re not letting Covid get in the way of our wedding for a third time – even in Tier 3”.
After suffering in solitude for as long as she could bear it, I was woken by my fiancée at 8am to words that suggested the weekend might be about the jump the tracks. “Mutant strain”… “rumours of a press conference later today”.
At first it was difficult to follow. The Prime Minister didn’t mention weddings, but did say that the restrictions in the new Tier 4 areas would resemble those in the November lockdown. Then we received a call from a crestfallen registrar in Camden Town. To cancel our wedding with 22 hours to go.
“I’ve got to phone five more couples after this,” he told us. I don’t know what number we were on his list, but that makes at least 12 devastated people in just one of London’s 32 boroughs. Not counting the South East of England. That’s a lot of lovers who are no longer saying “I do”.
It felt particularly galling that 10 minutes before Boris made his announcement, a courier had knocked on our door bearing £200 Covid tests – the passport to our honeymoon.
After nine months of the two of us working from a one-bedroom flat, in 72 hours we were supposed to be leaving on a plane for the Caribbean. All week I’d been singing “Woah, I’m going to Barbados”. We’d laughed like drains at the promise of a sunny denouement to this terrible year.
And now we were going nowhere. Actually, that’s not quite true – we were off to Sainsbury’s to buy a tube of Pringles and a bottle of Oyster Bay. In the cat food aisle, my fiancée’s phone buzzed with a text that said we’d both tested negative: 90 minutes is all it took to inform us we were cleared to travel to somewhere we were no longer allowed to go.
So, instead, we walked down to Euston to wave hello and goodbye to my fiancée’s family before they boarded a train back to Manchester. We had 10 minutes on the street with my mum and stepdad. Mimed hugs, blown kisses, real tears.
In the city, you could already tell that a storm was brewing. People were speed-walking towards King’s Cross, St Pancras and Euston. At the end of our street, a procession of cars inched toward the freedom of the M1. The air felt panicked and unstable.
In fact, my fiancée and I appeared to be the only people in London no longer in a hurry. With our third wedding date now by the wayside, we’ve decided to schedule our fourth attempt for this time next year. If our love has survived 2020 – and it has, easily – then it can endure whatever is following it down the pipes. And it’ll all be sorted by next Christmas, surely. Won’t it?
The registrar had to postpone with just 22 hours to go before our ceremony