Erica Hubbard waited a long time to get married to Nevin King. Had she waited any longer, she’s not sure they would be married today.
“I think it might have been impossible, because the lockdown occurred just a few weeks after,” said Ms. Hubbard, 44, a registered nurse in Lynchburg, Va., who walked down the aisle with Mr. King on Feb. 20 at Glencliff Manor, an events space in Rustburg, Va. Her squeak-by wedding date enabled her to hire a hairstylist and makeup artist before service work shutdowns. The lacy champagne-colored gown and accessories she had picked out months earlier were in place, too.
“I had ordered my wedding slippers, a wedding shawl and a lot of things from overseas. Right after I got them, I started hearing about other brides not being able to get things they ordered because of the coronavirus,” she said.
The just-in-time ceremony may have been a karmic reward for patience. Ms. Hubbard and Mr. King met in 2000, when both were employees at E Toys, a toy manufacturer in Blairs, Va. Ms. Hubbard worked in data entry. Mr. King, then living across the Virginia state border in Pelham, N.C., was a picker who read orders for delivery.
“He came over and introduced himself and asked me for my phone number,” she said. After dating for a year, they moved in together in Brookneal. In 2010, they were engaged. Wedding dates started proving elusive.
“I wanted to have a really big wedding, but a really big wedding is really expensive,” Ms. Hubbard said. For Ms. Hubband and Mr. King, 41, now a machine operator at Aerofin, a heating equipment supplier in Lynchburg, Va., “one year turned into two, then three, then four.”
At the start of this year, they had been a couple for two decades. Ms. Hubbard, who works at Virginia Premier, an insurance company, traded her dream of a big wedding for one that felt numerically significant: Feb. 20, 2020. “We had been together 20 years, and it’s an unusual date,” she said.
On that evening, they were married by Carol Tyree, a marriage celebrant appointed by the Virginia courts who works with Glencliff Manor, in a 15-minute ceremony in the music room. The couple has two sons, Mykhael Walker, 22, Ms. Hubbard’s son from a previous marriage; and Namir King, 7. But only one witness for their elopement was on hand, Ms. Hubbard’s mother, Gloria Howard.
And that was fine with Ms. Hubbard. “It was absolutely beautiful, the best day ever,” she said.
