St. Louis-area couple gets married in their living room over Zoom amid COVID-19 gathering restrictions
UNIVERSITY CITY, Mo. (KMOV.com) – The coronavirus has uprooted our lives and forced us to change our plans, including a University City couple’s wedding.
Lorie Jackson and Andre Fuller planned to get married at One Family Church’s Shaw campus with 150 of their friends and family. As the ban on crowds changed, so did their plans.
“When we got to 50 we said we can still pull this off, but when we got to 10 we said, ‘You know we can’t. My family is way larger than 10,” said Jackson. “I cried because all of our dreams and hopes washed away.”
They decided to still get married as planned on March 28. In their living room, with family streaming from the computer, Pastor Brent Roam officiated their wedding over Zoom.
“We’re doing it with our church services, we’re doing it with meetings, we’re doing it with all our friends, I guess you can do weddings remotely,” said Roam.
Fuller admits he wasn’t sure what Zoom even was until a few days before the wedding.
“I thought that Zoom was a song by Lionel Richie,” Fuller joked. “I Googled it and I looked it up. This is Zoom, okay.”
Jackson’s dress wasn’t ready before the alterations store was forced to shut down because of COVID-19. Fuller’s ring was still at the jeweler’s getting resized. The couple, who met in high school and reconnected years later at the gym, says the jeweler was kind enough to send a temporary ring for the ceremony.
“Their willingness to adapt all of their expectations, to throw everything out the window and say what matters most is not the ceremony, it’s not the cake, it’s not the flowers, it’s not the surroundings, it’s each other and the fact that they pushed into that and said, ‘We’re doing this.’ That speaks volumes and that speaks to my heart.” said Roam.
The couple plans to have another ceremony and reception on August 22 to celebrate with their friends and family where Lorie plans to wear her wedding dress.
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