As coronavirus spread, these couples couldn’t have weddings, but they could still get married

Jeremy Howe and Meghan Sunzeri planned to get married at the William Penn Inn in Montgomery County. The ceremony to be tinged in bright tones of teal and silver. There would be more succulents than flowers.

Their rings were engraved with the date — March 29 — and more than 200 invitations were mailed out to family and friends.

Then the coronavirus pandemic hit and Montgomery County quickly became one of the epicenters in Pennsylvania. After 15 months of planning the perfect ceremony and reception, they had to improvise a new wedding if they wanted to be married.

Sunzeri realized she wouldn’t be able to wear the white gown she picked out after trying on 20 others during multiple trips to Wilmington. Her nails wouldn’t be done. Her dad couldn’t walk her down the aisle.

“We would’ve loved to have experienced that with everyone else,” Sunzeri said. But they didn’t have a choice.

Across the Philadelphia region and the country, the coronavirus is rapidly changing the ways people mark their most important personal milestones — the rites of declaring love, celebrating anniversaries, even the way they grieve.

Instead of holding large birthday parties, people are honking car horns as they drive by the birthday kid’s house, trailing posters and streamers. Funerals are being live-streamed so people can still mourn. Families can’t sit around the table for a Passover Seder or go on an Easter egg hunt, so instead they will read the Haggadah on video chat or attend a virtual Mass.

For the weddings that are still going on, they are much smaller, and with hopes that the big celebration will happen one day, maybe next year.

» READ MORE: Can I get married during the coronavirus?

Six days before their wedding, Howe and Sunzeri realized Gov. Tom Wolf’s stay-at-home order would take effect in just four hours. Not only would it be unsafe to have a large wedding, but it would soon be illegal to hold large gatherings.

They already had their marriage certificate, and Jeremy’s uncle, their officiant, was ready to marry them. They had waited long enough to be husband and wife.

“If Uncle Terry is OK with it,” Howe recalled saying, “we will just get hitched tonight.”

Kelly-Lynne Russell and Andrew Guy returned from a wedding in South Africa on March 18 and were told that because they had a layover in London, they would need to quarantine at home for 14 days.

But Russell couldn’t move back to her place — one of her roommates is a health-care worker — forcing the engaged couple to move in together in Arlington, Va. This wasn’t ideal. As observant Protestants they did not want to live together before marriage.

Their wedding wasn’t scheduled until May 23. So four days after they landed in the States, they had their wedding in Andrew’s living room, guests attending via Facebook Live.

Guy’s parents watched from Lancaster. Russell’s parents watched on a plane somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean.

“As we get married today the original vows of sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer, seem even more relevant because we’re in this storm together,” Russell read from her handwritten vows.

They are hoping to have another wedding next year, when everyone can be in the same room, dancing, hugging, crying, and celebrating in the ways they imagined.

“There are no wrong decisions right now in terms of how to hold your wedding,” Guy said. ‘’And you’re going to have a really great story to tell in 20 years.”

Event consultant and emcee Matthew Ostroff said even as people have been postponing weddings, couples are still getting engaged and planning for their future. This week he booked four new weddings in just one day.

This gives him hope.

“I feel like we’re living in some sort of post-apocalyptic, bad sci-fi movie,” said Ostroff, who works at EBE Talent in Philadelphia. “The fact that people are still getting engaged and looking to plan their weddings a year from now, that is a good sign to me.”

Ryan Eskridge and Alex D’Ignazio are sheltering in place in San Francisco, trying to figure out if their Philadelphia wedding at Knowlton Mansion will happen May 30. They have a backup date for June of next year.

Their planned honeymoon in Italy, an epicenter of the pandemic, is canceled. So are bachelor and bachelorette parties.

It’s been hard shelving plans for which they have been counting down the days. But this unprecedented time is also making them appreciate, even more, how lucky they are to be together.

“The fact that we do have each other to get through this has really been crystalized,” D’Ignazio, 31, said.

» READ MORE: Can I get married during the coronavirus? Here's what you need to know

Yori Cozen and Brad Hess were supposed to be married at Talamore Country Club in Ambler next month.

The couple had to reschedule. As a health-care worker, Cozen, 29, saw this coming. She is one of the nurse anesthetists inserting breathing tubes into patients at Crozer-Chester Medical Center.

She felt disappointed, but eventually reassured. She has a grandmother going through chemotherapy who is particularly vulnerable, but insists on attending her granddaughter’s wedding.

“It is kind of relieving to know that my wedding will not be going on in the midst of an acute crisis,” she said. “And there is a sense of relief that I don’t have to make the decision anymore.”

Howe and Sunzeri picked their new wedding day in that moment of panic, worrying if they did not do it now, they would need to wait months.

They were both at work. At the end of the day, they drove separately to their wedding at Howe’s aunt and uncle’s house in Collegeville.

On her wedding day, Sunzeri would end up wearing her work clothes — booties, maroon pants, and a gray top — while standing in a relative’s living room. Howe wore a flannel shirt and his Doc Marten boots.

There was a white cake and flowers from Wegmans, and Howe’s aunt gave Sunzeri the veil she wore at her wedding. The television entertainment center became a makeshift altar. Instead of having steak and lobster, the couple ate chicken nuggets and waffle fries from Chick-fil-A.

Sunzeri had imagined dancing with her dad to “Home” by Foo Fighters, and Howe dancing with his mom to “High Tide or Low Tide” by Bob Marley. Now, that’s somewhere in the future.

“It kind of provided a lot of clarity as to what’s important,” Howe said. “We just want to be married. That is all that matters to us.”