Have That Pinterest Wedding

Rather than wait until after the pandemic to throw the big party she’d always envisioned, Mount Prospect bride Mary Kate de Leon decided to plunge forward in October with a small (20 attendees) wedding with her groom, Joel, at the Frank Lloyd Wright–designed Emil Bach House in Rogers Park. But the next question was how to document it during this peculiar time. “At first I didn’t want pictures of people with masks because I thought it would make me sad, but this is when we got married,” she says. The bright side? All those Pinterest details she’d been coveting — the ones that would be too expensive or time-consuming to pull off for a big group — suddenly seemed doable. “Instead of the usual celebratory confetti, we punched holes in leaves and made leaf confetti. It was a small detail I loved, and I couldn’t have executed it with 200 people.”

Skip the Bridal Party

Cassady Wehba and her fiancé, Drew Fielding, had a 200-person barn party planned in her native Oklahoma. Mid-pandemic, that turned into a 25-person, $4,800 all-in rooftop ceremony at Agency EA in River North. One of the most stressful parts, she notes, was dealing with bridesmaids who had different levels of comfort with gathering in person. “My maid of honor and one bridesmaid both dropped out because of COVID and difficulty traveling,” the Lake View East bride says. Wedding parties are a wonderful support system, she adds, but “they bring so much stress to the situation in a COVID environment. Who is going to feel comfortable, who’s not? You’re trying to determine if they are going to show up, or if they are going to bail the day of.” Wehba’s bridal party (minus the two who bowed out) attended her ceremony, though they didn’t stand up. Still, the simplicity ended up feeling just right, especially in such a stunning venue. “I came away feeling appreciative that it was so authentically us.”

Isolate Before You Celebrate

When COVID hit, Evanston resident Tracy Goodheart and her fiancé, Rob, decided to cancel their indoor winter wedding and throw a summer yard party for 25. By early July, they whittled their in-person numbers even further and added a drive-by celebration. “We had this whole elaborate plan, with time slots for 120 guests, 10 people onsite at a time,” Goodheart says. “We used a Doodle [poll], batched people by comfort level, all of it.” But one thing they didn’t figure into their plans: quarantining in advance. “I got exposed to COVID at my socially distant bachelorette party — an outdoor picnic at Union Park in West Town — which was less than two weeks before our wedding.” They ended up scrapping the entire plan and getting married in a sunrise ceremony on a beach in Evanston, just the two of them and a photographer, and only their officiant was there virtually. “Luckily it was a beautiful morning and a lovely wedding.”

Embrace What’s Different

Latha Sundaram was supposed to get married at the Chicago Athletic Association in July. An Indian American woman marrying a Swedish American man, she and her groom, Kim Anehall, had guests planning to fly in from all across the globe … until they didn’t. Instead, the West Loop couple ended up with 10 people outside on the Northwestern campus, with another 175 on Zoom, tuning in from 24 countries and seven time zones. After the early-evening ceremony, Sundaram and her new husband went to Monteverde for dinner and then home to enjoy their first dance. “Was it different in our living room and not on a dance floor?” says Sundaram. “Yes. But you can still have these special moments. Still have that first look, still have the toasts. You can still keep tradition alive, even if the mechanics for getting that are different. We had originally planned a very social — intentionally social — gathering. Instead, we ate dinner, just the two of us, so I got the chance to actually talk and laugh with my husband on my wedding night. Not all brides can say that.”

You Just Might Love Your Small Wedding

Even though Abby Sullivan decided to postpone for a year her 250-person Orland Park wedding celebration planned for July, she didn’t want to prolong her engagement that long. So in August, she and her fiancé, Ben Schubert, got married in front of 15 family members in her soon-to-be in-laws’ backyard. Sullivan wore her bridal gown (she’ll break it out again for the big party this summer), carried flowers from the farmers’ market, and threw a catered dinner outside. “All the rules are out the window this year — a wedding can be anything you want it to be,” Sullivan says. “When you’re dress shopping, they always say what you think you want isn’t what you’ll end up getting. I never thought I would want a small wedding, but it was wonderful.”