TALK OF A WEDDING DURING A PANDEMIC
A couple in Toronto decided to get married while Canada remained in lockdown. The result was a wedding to remember and to write about.
Two evenings before we caught our return flight from Singapore to San Francisco, my husband and I stayed up for an event that was set to begin at 1.30 AM our time. Ten thousand miles away, exactly half a day behind us, a bride and groom were primping and preening for photos before taking their marriage sacrament in a church in Toronto. We were to watch Ian and Christina tie the knot after months of preparation amid the uncertainties posed by Covid-19.
The bridegroom is the son of my friend Berny, my classmate from school in Tanzania. When Berny and I met in a classroom in fifth grade in 1973, her legs and arms were reed-thin and shapely while mine already resembled the pillars of the Parthenon. Our friendship blossomed during our adolescence, navigated the tortuous terrain of puberty, and saw us through the tumult of our early twenties, long after I returned to my home town in India’s Chennai (Madras) in 1978. Our epistolary journey wound to a halt in the 80s but thanks to a letter from Berny to my father in India, we reconnected after 1990 when both of us had had our first child. It isn’t wrong to say that our friendship was forged tighter despite—and sometimes because of—our husbands who now believe they too 🙄 are our classmates.
Goan Catholics born and raised in Dar-es-salaam, Berny and Mark now live in Toronto with their three sons—Ian, Tyler and Liam—and Berny’s octogenarian mother, Fabia. This is a cool, talented family. Little did we know just how creative, talented and thoughtful they were until Ian and his fiancée Christina opted to wed during the pandemic and celebrate their big day entirely as a virtual event.
By about November, as they watched the Covid numbers ratchet up around the world, the couple knew they would have to think outside the box to execute their dream wedding. They set the date as June 26 of 2021, coming to terms with how their initial plan to have a wedding at a local winery or at a golf course would have to be shafted.
As time went on, Ian, Christina and their families discovered that it was one thing to decide on a virtual wedding experience and quite another to grapple with the challenges of executing a wedding while a pandemic upended people’s lives and disrupted businesses.
“Everything we normally take for granted could not be taken for granted during Covid,” Berny said, enumerating all the issues that bubbled up to the surface as they began to plan. For one, when small things like the postal service became unreliable in the United States during the end of Donald Trump’s term in office, the problems rippled into Canadian life as well since the family could not send out physical cards to America. Buying clothes and shoes for the bride and groom and all the family also became a hurdle when one couldn’t just drive to stores and expect them to function as before. The selection of a wedding dress, normally a milestone event in a bride’s life, became a Zoom event for Christina. She bought four dresses online and went about her fitting with the physical help of her mother; those she had invited logged in through Zoom to give their input and cheer her. The alteration of dresses, too, would prove to be a hassle. Berny told me that the stores opened six days before the wedding and that she rushed out to buy two dresses for her mother who, given her age, had not left the house since the pandemic began.
Skewing all their plans was the yoyo-ing of the rules and restrictions in public places owing to Covid. Ian and Christina were uncertain if the restriction of having only ten people for an indoor or outdoor event would apply to their wedding or whether there may be a relaxing of the rules by the time June rolled around.
By the time of their wedding day, only ten people were allowed to gather inside or outside all premises. However, they were allowed to have up to fifteen percent of the capacity inside the church; hence about 85 people—in masks, of course—were in attendance at the church in marked pews observing social distancing. After attending the wedding inside the church, the guests went back to their homes to enjoy the wedding reception virtually. None of the guests, except Ian and Christina’s immediate family, ten people in all, would experience the charm of a banquet in an outdoor setting in Berny and Mark’s home.
The marquee tent, the chandelier inside the tent, the fairy lights adorning it, the tiki torches all around the yard, and the flowers transformed their yard into a magical place. Berny said it was Christina’s dream was to have an outdoor wedding. “Ian wanted to make sure she got that.” While Fabia, Christina, and her mother Dulcie helped with the wedding decor, Mark went about building a beautiful arch for his future daughter-in-law.
The family was prepared for a total of fifty guests in their yard just in case Toronto relaxed the rules around social gatherings. They felt that businesses had suffered enough and that they needed to be generous during their planning. Berny told me that her son and Christina worried about this all the time: “How can we help these people without nickel-and-diming them?” With every service they used—hair salons, nail salons, rental services of all kinds—most of which had been closed since about March 2020, they decided to take the high road.
As guests like me watched the reception unfold with the youngest child, Liam, managing the evening with the panache of a seasoned emcee, I knew this would be a night to remember. There were many highlights from that reception in the basement of Berny and Mark’s residence. I’m probably not the only one who forgot we were all watching this on a tiny screen. Berny’s song to her son had me all choked up and worried for her just in case she was unable to get to the end. The three-tier wedding cake made by the groom’s brother, Tyler, a “never-before baker” hungry for a challenge, had me feeling faint. Ian’s tribute to his exceptional brothers made me wonder if it was way too late to take parenting lessons from Berny and Mark. Still, of everything that unfolded that night, the most precious moment was watching Christina’s excitement when a screen slid open to reveal the night’s entertainment band.
Mark - lead guitarist, lead and backup vocals and sound technician
Ian - bass guitarist, lead and backup vocals
Tyler - drummer, backup vocals/harmony
Liam - keyboardist, backup vocals/harmony
Besides the church marriage and the wedding reception, Ian and Christina’s wedding week was filled with other traditional events, one of which reminded me of a Hindu tradition. On one of the mornings, the bridal couple were anointed with turmeric and coconut milk in the backyard of Berny and Mark’s home. Coconuts are bountiful along the coast by the state of Goa and hence coconut milk is one of the primary essences of the ancestral traditions in these states. Relatives from around the world watched on Zoom and showered their blessings and participated vicariously, giving instructions about what they wanted done to the couple. The Goan “Roce” ceremony is the equivalent of the Haldi ceremony in the Hindu tradition as practiced in the north of India.
Keeping to Goan custom, the family prepared a big meal the Thursday before the wedding and distributed it to a homeless shelter in Toronto. A similar feast was arranged by Christina and her mother in their hometown in Bangalore. In another inspiring Goan tradition which hints at Portuguese influence in Goan history in India, Berny’s mother made slabs of her famous fruit cake—they’re drenched in alcohol—and cut them into small slices for their wedding guests. Mark and the boys then packaged the favors and dropped them off with the caterer.
On the evening of the wedding reception, elegant meal boxes—each holding a four-course dinner alongside a menu card and a wedding favor—arrived at the homes of over 150 family and friends in the greater Toronto area.
At the end of the night’s festivities, minutes after we emerged from the 15-inch world of an unforgettable Zoom wedding, the bell rang at our apartment in Singapore even as Ian’s serenade of Christina still rang in my ears. My husband opened the door. The man from Grab stood outside the door, two brown paper parcels in his hand. “Are you The Mohans? You have a delivery from Podi & Poriyal.”
“Yes!” My husband answered in a voice laced with hunger and anticipation and it was as if he hadn’t eaten in over a week. He grabbed the bags from my hand so he could photograph the contents. Now here was a perfectly timed delivery of a south Indian vegetarian wedding feast arranged by the bride and groom from around the world just so that we could celebrate their special moment with them.
Berny told me how the couple had arranged for every guest and anyone else in their home, wherever they lived, to dine alongside the wedded couple and their families. Depending on the time zone—Canada, England, France, Dubai, Australia, United States, India, Tanzania, Malaysia and Singapore—guests received a breakfast, a lunch or a dinner aligned with their specific dietary preferences. The couple really wanted their guests to not just “watch” their wedding; in a way, eating “with” the newlyweds on their special day allowed guests to participate in the wedding almost as if they were in physical attendance. Besides, Ian and Christina didn’t want people to send them gifts and not give something special in return.
In all, the couple catered over a hundred meals worldwide. I can imagine how coordinating just this alone would have been a monumental todo on a wedding planning spreadsheet. Merely thinking about the logistics would have made anyone crabby and ravenous, let alone two hungry old people lusting after a magnificent wedding cake that continued to remain inaccessible on screen.
In real life in our apartment, my husband set out our plates. We sat down to an authentic Tamil-style “kalyana” (wedding) meal: lentil vadai, semolina payasam, squash kootu, winter melon sambar, tamarind rasam, cabbage poriyal, papadum, steamed rice, yogurt, and pickle.
There was, however, one thing wanting on a memorable wedding day punctuated by one surprise after another. I had to text Berny. “Hey, where was “The Face” at the wedding?” I asked. “We were looking forward to a glimpse of The Face.”
Minutes later, my faux classmate Mark, still looking so debonair as Dad-of-the-hour, called me on WhatsApp from Toronto. He pulled up his signature Heck-what-did-I-do-now clown face that lit up my screen and almost set it ablaze.
What a talented, loving, and spirited family to undertake and execute such a well planned wedding in these uncertain times! Those of us who have done a wedding can appreciate the vision and efforts even more! Thank you for capturing and sharing the highlights!
What a beautiful write-up of this unusual and memorable wedding, Kalpana! Your detailed account of this event is a wonderful gift to the newly-wedded couple!