Coronavirus: The Reality of Cancelling A Dream Italian Wedding

I never could have imagined on that day last September, when my partner Eamonn got down on one knee and proposed in a national park in Ireland, that the following year we’d have to cancel our dream wedding with a few weeks to go. Even writing it now feels unimaginable – and yet the last few weeks have been a whirlwind of stress and upset. Now the reality has sunk in we know what this means: our wedding in Italy in May won’t be happening.

It’s hard to describe the pain of something that you’ve been looking forward to for months being gradually taken away from you. But when it has come to coronavirus and our wedding, that’s how it has felt: a flicker of hope gradually being extinguished as the days have gone on.

The first I heard about coronavirus was in January, around the time our invites had gone out. Eamonn’s colleague was due to head to China for Chinese New Year but her parents advised her not to travel due to the outbreak. We realised it was serious, but never imagined that it would cause the whole country to shut down. My previous job as Digital Editor at Global Blue relied heavily on the Chinese travel and shopping market, and now they weren’t even leaving their houses. It was a worrying development, but being stoic Brits, we assumed it would all blow over.

Meanwhile we were well on our way to planning our dream wedding and could never dream a pandemic could be about to derail everything. We both wanted a short engagement and opted for the beginning of the season in May. We just wanted a picturesque location, good weather, amazing food and to enjoy the day with close friends and family.

We have always loved Italy, so I spent many, many hours researching the perfect location. I love Capri, but without a budget of £50,000+ to spend, you would be laughed at. We liked Tuscany, but thought it was too remote and obvious. It wasn’t until a friend got back from a conference in Puglia and recommended a few resorts as possible wedding venues that things started to take shape. By early November, we were booked to visit the area on a location-scouting trip.

Eamonn and I have a two-year-old daughter, Clementine Lilac. We met at work at the online shopping site Global Blue in 2012 and kept our relationship a secret for a year. Since then, we discussed marriage on and off but, after buying our first home, we prioritised the extension of our bungalow. Fast forward eight years - and I thought I was finally about to marry the love of my life.

I was so looking forward to a few child-free days of feasting on carbs and Italian wine as we planned to fly to Italy to look for venues – until I was told I was at risk of redundancy. Talk about plummeting from dizzy heights to a whole new low. Getting engaged one month and being made redundant the next was the biggest kick in the stomach – or so I thought. But I didn’t want to let it defeat me and after 10 years I knew it was the right time to move on. After a decade running a luxury fashion and travel website I had skills, a great contacts book and ideas – it was time to explore the world of freelance journalism. And anyway, I had a wedding to distract me from feeling sorry for myself.

We found our dream venue in Otranto: picture olive groves, fig trees, whitewashed buildings and a cathedral a five-minute drive away with a breath-taking mosaic floor. We put down a hefty deposit to hire a 38-room villa for two days and built a website for our guests with the help of a developer friend. We didn’t think we would receive so many positive responses to the wedding as we were asking people to travel so far, but our guests were just as captivated by the Italian wedding dream as we were. Friends booked to fly in from destinations as far-flung as Washington, China, Austria and Bulgaria.

After the shock of being made redundant, I had to rethink the whole wedding outfit budget and bought the first high-street wedding dress I tried on, the day I was given my redundancy letter. As for coronavirus, by February it was starting to make headlines in the UK.

I was in Florence in February to celebrate a friend’s birthday and our temperature was checked on arrival at the airport. To me, though, it was just a precaution. Nothing to worry about. But in a matter of weeks the virus had gone global. That’s when we started to realise it could be the end for our wedding.

As the gloomy news reports started to quicken are hearts continued to sink. By 12 March, I received a WhatsApp from a friend asking if I had seen the news about Italy closing down completely, I was frantically googling everything I could about the virus while looking into contracts and checking our insurance. My dream that it would be ok by May started seeming less realistic by the day. The moment it hit home our wedding wouldn't go ahead felt unbearable.

We’ve been back and forth on the phone to the hotel for about a week now and have decided to postpone to the end of September, but who knows if Covid-19 will be on its way out by then. If not, we will lose our £5,000 deposit, not to mention all the bridal outfits I bought that can’t be returned, with bridal hair and make-up trials potentially sending a further £400 down the drain. Luckily it was straightforward postponing with the hotel venue. If we'd cancelled we would have lost everything. We are still trying to get a refund/credit from the airlines, which is a slow and painful process, meaning we can't rebook our next batch of flights for September until this happens.

We already had insurance, but if the hotel offers you other dates they won't cover you for cancelling. So if we didn't reschedule we could lose up to our total cost of £22k. Because airlines and hotels are closing and offering travellers other options of when to travel, travel insurance isn’t that helpful either because they are telling people to rearrange.

Now, the bigger picture is starting to come into focus: our daughter’s nursery is on the verge of closing, friends are being taken down by the illness and texting me their symptoms and Europe is on lockdown. It feels like my world has been turned upside down and I can’t help but take it personally. First the redundancy and now this?

Of course, everyone is struggling at the moment – there are food shortages and people are dying. My wedding, in the grand scheme of things, is not the most important thing here and I remind myself of this regularly.

I was due back in Italy mid-April for a pre-wedding trip to finalise table décor, cake tasting, flower arrangements, table favours, wedding menu and so on – all the fun stuff. When this was cancelled I started taking the stress out in my 6am spin and barre classes, to balance out my anxiety about the uncertain future we all face.

Every girl grows up planning her dream wedding. For me, that’s an idyllic Italian church, steeped in history, with vibrant pink bougainvillea sweeping across its ancient stones. I would walk out of the church arm in arm with my prince charming, wearing – of course –Chanel ballerina pumps. Ever since I saw Keira Knightley’s wedding look, that was the refined yet low-key style I wanted to recreate on my own big day.

In an effort to make the best of the situation, it’s likely we’ll use our original wedding date to host drinks in our garden for close friends and family, to celebrate the day. One thing I’ve learned from all of this is that nothing worth having – not even the fairytale wedding you worked so hard for – ever comes easy. Eamonn and I suffered years of office politics and colleagues’ opinions on why things between us would never work, followed by a house renovation, while we lost two relatives. Everything that has sought to break us has only made us stronger. So, nice try, coronavirus, but I’m still here with my Chanel flats ready to walk down the aisle. After all, good things come to those who wait, right?

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