On Friday, April 17, Veronica Wickline, 26, a part-time Latin teacher and writer, stood at the altar at St. Peter, a Roman Catholic church in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Little Washington, Va. Dressed in her wedding dress, veil and pearl earrings, she was there to get married. But the man standing next to her was not her beloved groom. Rather, it was his high school best friend, who was serving as a proxy.
The groom, Taylor Johnston Barker, 26, is a second lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps. He is currently stationed at 29 Palms, a base in southern San Bernardino County, California. Because of the pandemic, the base issued an order preventing service members from venturing more than 25 miles. Very few exceptions were made, and getting married wasn’t one of them.
Because Ms. Wickline was free to go to San Bernardino, the couple looked into getting married there. “It was important for us to get married within the Catholic Church, so I did a little priest shopping,” Mr. Barker said. They found out quickly that the local bishop had put a halt on all weddings for the foreseeable future, and no priest could break the rule.
Postponing the wedding was not a palatable option. “We had been dating for five years. We were ready,” Mr. Barker said. “We felt like amidst all the uncertainty it was the one thing we were most looking forward to.”
Other Roman Catholic priests across the country, including in Little Washington, where they were originally scheduled to get married, were conducting weddings. So they came up with a wild solution: How about a marriage by proxy there?
“Taylor’s response to all this was to research canon law,” said Ms. Wickline, laughing.
They sought approval from the bishop of the Arlington Diocese in Virginia, who oversees Little Washington, as well as from the Rev. Kevin Beres, the priest who was scheduled to perform their original wedding and who conducted the new version as well.
“The whole thing was rather moving,” Father Beres said. “It was actually the groom who did the research on his own to figure out this was a possibility. He clearly loved his bride and wanted to be married to her.”
He remembered learning about marriage by proxy in his canon law classes from his days at the seminary. “We seminarians all laughed wondering why this was even still in there,” he said. “I do believe that I am the only priest in the diocese that has ever done this. It is very rare today, and this is the only instance I know of it.” (It was more common centuries ago, Mr. Barker said, noting that both Napoleon and Marie Antoinette were married by proxy.)
The groom was present at the ceremony over Zoom. (His proxy stand-in, who would have served as the best man, asked that he not be identified.) The bride, for her part, concentrated on the blessings and the words of the liturgy. “I was mostly focused on saying what I had to say,” she said. “It felt very solemn, as if we were doing something substantial.”
She felt fortunate that Roman Catholic weddings don’t require the couple to “osculate,” a fancy word for kiss. “I did not kiss the best man,” she said. “I think I blew a kiss at the screen.”
After the ceremony Ms. Wickline flew to California, where she is now self-quarantining with her groom at a bed-and-breakfast in the desert, less than 25 miles from 29 Palms.
“It’s a great start to married life,” he said.
