Brad Wilson walked out of his Manhattan apartment building and straight, it seemed, into an Isaac Asimov thriller.
“Brooke, if we are going to make it to Dallas, we have to make a run for it,” Mr. Wilson, 41, said to his fiancée, Brooke June Cook, on March 12, a surreal moment in time created by the effects of the new coronavirus as it hit New York. They were to be married March 21 at Park Cities Presbyterian Church in Dallas.
“We need to put some distance between us and that thing,” Mr. Wilson said to Ms. Cook, about Covid-19.
A short time later, Mr. Wilson, who lives in the Chelsea neighborhood and is an executive at LinkedIn, picked up Ms. Cook, a 30-year-old lawyer, on the Upper West Side. He then stepped on the gas and headed south, “before the virus shut down the entire city and we became trapped there.” (It has not been shut down.)
As they drove, Mr. Wilson began listing their options, which included heading to Texas for their wedding, though they had heard rumors that the church where they were to marry was about to close its doors to help stop the spread of the virus, per the Center for Disease Control recommendations. (A few days later, the church did indeed shutter its doors.)
A second option would be to drive to Missouri, where Mr. Wilson’s mother lives, or maybe do what so many others had done and simply postpone their wedding.
“To tell you the truth, we didn’t really know where we were going,” Mr. Wilson said in a phone interview. “When we got near Philly, we decided to head to Charlottesville, Va., for the night because Brooke had gone to law school there and had some familiarity with the location.”
They drove on, their car radio a talk-soup of scientific chatter and static, full of sound bites on closings and quarantines, empty trains and supermarket shelves. Life was suddenly a lot more difficult and uncertain than the day the couple met in November 2017 at a flag football tournament in Central Park.
When they got around to Option No. 3, possibly canceling their wedding in Dallas, they called two people for advice and counsel: their officiant and pastor, David Kim, and Missy Donovan, one of Ms. Cook’s spiritual mentor’s who was going to be reading scripture at their Dallas wedding.
At 9:45 p.m., they arrived both in Charlottesville and at a big decision, calling off their planned wedding and choosing a fourth option they had not previously considered: elopement.
“Every time we heard updated news about the coronavirus, more and more people were dying, more and more restaurants and venues and other businesses were closing,” said Ms. Cook, 30. “We knew if we returned home unmarried, we would not get another chance for a while, because everything back home, like everywhere else, had been turned upside down.”
They spent the duration of their evening in a hotel room, sending emails and texts to friends and family about having a change of plans, but not a change of heart.
Ms. Cook called her parents, Debra K. Cook of Yorba Linda, Calif., and D. Curtis Cook of Columbus, Miss., and Mr. Wilson reached out to his mother, Nancy A. Wilson of Jefferson City, Mo. (His father, Richard J. Wilson, is deceased.)
The couple’s ambitious new plan involved getting married on Saturday, March 14, their self-imposed deadline, a seemingly impossible task as they now had less than 48 hours at that point to come up with a marriage license, a judge, two witnesses, a photographer and of course, a wedding venue.
Ms. Cook had already sent a precursory email to a judge, Rick Moore of the Charlottesville Circuit Court, who knew Ms. Cook from her days at the University of Virginia, where she received a law degree.
Ms. Cook asked Judge Moore if he would consider officiating at her wedding on the upcoming Saturday, despite the fact that she had not yet found a wedding venue. Judge Moore’s first response was not very promising: “Well, I was planning on doing a little yardwork tomorrow,” he said, and left it at that.
On Friday, the couple went to the Charlottesville Circuit Court Clerk’s office to apply for and receive their wedding license.
“Virginia has no waiting-period requirement,” Ms. Cook said. “So thankfully we were able to get the license.”
With the clock ticking — and the couple carefully monitoring updated news about the coronavirus, which was now adding words and phrases like “pandemic,” and “social distancing” — Ms. Cook reached out to a friend in Charlottesville over Instagram. She explained her situation and asked if he knew of any photographers who may be willing to work on extremely short notice. They quickly agreed upon Kate Greer, a photographer who specialized in events at wineries, the kind of place that Ms. Cook and Mr. Wilson both thought would be great for hosting a wedding.
By day’s end, Judge Moore had confirmed that he would indeed serve as the couple’s officiant and that he and his wife, Nancy Moore, would wait for word as to where the wedding would be held.
The couple awoke at 9 a.m. on their wedding day, three days after leaving Manhattan, and just six hours from their self-imposed deadline for tying the knot, but they were still without a wedding venue.
Eight minutes later, Ms. Greer received a text from Veritas vineyard in Afton, Va., which had heard from Ms. Greer about the couple’s plight. The vineyard offered its property, free of charge, along with two bottles of complimentary wine to jump-start the celebration.
Relieved, Ms. Cook sped of for a two-hour hair and nail appointment (10 a.m. to noon) she had scheduled the day before, and when she arrived at the salon she was greeted by Mrs. Donovan, her spiritual mentor who also happened to live in Charlottesville and who was supposed to read scripture at Ms. Cook’s original wedding in Dallas. The two women hugged and wept, and then Mrs. Donovan reached into a bag and pulled out champagne, a veil, and white roses and baby’s breath flowers, which Mrs. Donovan began assembling into a bouquet.
“At that point, I felt like I was around family, again,” Ms. Cook said, crying.
By 2 p.m. Saturday, the small wedding party had arrived at Veritas Winery. The events manager brought out the wine, along with a bottle of sparkling rosé and champagne flutes, and gave the bride and groom and their guests access to the full vineyard.
Everyone drove to the top of the winery, overlooking majestic open fields in a chilly air. An old wine barrel had been sitting there, and Judge Moore used it as a lectern.
The ceremony began at exactly 3:15 p.m., with Mrs. Donovan her husband, Kevin Donovan, serving as matron of honor and best man. When the bride walked down the aisle to meet her groom, everyone began humming Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March.”
The couple then exchanged vows, and read letters they had written to each another. Twenty minutes later, Ms. Cook and Mr. Wilson were married, and were back in their black 2018 Nissan Altima to their honeymoon, to be spent in parts of Georgia and Florida.
“We had originally booked our honeymoon in the British Virgin Islands,” the groom said, with a sigh. “Would you like to take a guess as to what destroyed those plans.”
On This Day
Where Veritas Winery, Afton, Va.
When March 14, 2020
Return to Spender The couple were thrilled to have already received a refund for their honeymoon in the British Virgin Islands that never happened. (They’re still working on a refund for the Dallas wedding.)
Rehearsal Dress The lacy white dress that the bride wore at Veritas Winery was actually the dress she had planned to wear at dress rehearsal for the wedding in Dallas, where the real wedding dress is still waiting for her.
No Cake on Pi Day The couple were got married on 3/14 (otherwise known as Pi Day), so instead of wedding cake, they bought a coconut cream pie to have with their sparkling rosé.
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