HANCOCK COUNTY — As parents, 2020 was supposed to be a banner year for Lowell and Kathy Fisher.
The Fortville couple had planned to see their son get married in a lavish wedding in late April, and their daughter get married in her dream beach wedding in mid-May.
Sadly, the new age of social distancing made those plans moot.
As government-mandated shutdowns began to ripple throughout the state in mid-March, the Fishers watched helplessly as their two children struggled to come up with a Plan B.
As travel restrictions set in, their son — Austin Fisher, 24 — and his fiancee fielded calls from relatives as far away as Colorado saying they were afraid to make the trip.
In the meantime, his sister — Amanda Louden, 31 — gradually started processing the reality that her childhood dream of saying “I do” at a beach wedding in Puerto Rico was about to be put on hold.
There was special meaning in the date she and her fiance had picked — May 15 — which would have marked the 10th anniversary of the day they met.
“I feel heartbroken for them,” said Kathy Fisher of her children. “They spent so much time and effort — as anybody does planning a wedding — and then this happens. You have all these emotions happening at such a high level leading up to the big day, and you’re just about to the finish line when it’s all put on pause. It’s heartbreaking for them,” she said.
Her kids aren’t alone. Couples have been postponing weddings not just throughout the county, but around the world, as this unprecedented year has forced large-scale gatherings to be put on hold.
Wedding coordinators at churches, chapels and banquet halls throughout Hancock County have been busy working with stressed-out couples to move dates, hampered by not knowing when this age of social distancing will end. Gov. Eric Holcomb is expected to ease some restrictions today (May 1), the future of large gatherings is still up in the air.
“Most of my brides have rescheduled, and a few have canceled altogether,” said Maria Dawson, owner of Bradley Hall Ballroom & Events Venue in Greenfield, as well as OnSite Caterer, which caters all over the county and beyond.
“They’re in fear — they’re afraid of the second wave (of the coronavirus outbreak) — and they don’t know what the fallout is going to be. Some have rescheduled for fall or winter, but most of them have rescheduled for next year,” said Dawson. “There’s a lot of waiting around just to see what’s going to happen, which is really hard when you’re planning a wedding.”
Phillip Davis, manager at Adaggios Banquet Hall and Conference Centre in Greenfield, is also helping couples move their dates to the summer, fall and into next year.
“We pretty much always have a wedding booked every weekend, and every Thursday or Friday night we have some sort of not-for-profit or other event, so we’ve had to move a lot of dates,” said Davis, whose father-in-law, Doug Dugger, owns the banquet hall.
“Couples had to cancel just a week before their event, which as you can imagine has been very stressful on everyone,” he said.
The uncertainty has been especially stressful on couples with weddings booked in June and July, “because they’re on the cusp, thinking ‘Are we going to have it or not? Do we move it or not?’” he said.
“Typically, you should confirm your guest count within a couple months of the wedding, so that’s what makes things especially stressful. If you invite 150 and only 25 show up, then you just spent $10,000 when you could have spent $3,000,” he said.
Only half the people invited to a fundraiser on March 14 — the last time a scheduled event was held at Adagio’s — showed up, he said.
One couple with a May 23 reception scheduled at Adaggios has not postponed, holding out hope that their date will stick.
While all couples are understandably stressed out, Davis said how well they each handle it varies from couple to couple.
“Some people are stressing out a little too early, trying to move dates that have been scheduled as early as September, but we’re asking them to be patient,” he said. “If you choose a good venue, they’re going to work with you to make sure your wedding dreams come true. We’re a family-owned business and we’ve got your back no matter what. That’s what we want to stress to them.”
While most couples opt for Saturday weddings, Davis has encouraged some to consider going with Fridays or Sundays instead when rescheduling, to help work dates into a calendar that already has a number of Saturdays booked well in advance.
Jamie McDowell — Austin Fisher’s fiancee — considers them among the lucky ones. All of their wedding vendors — from the venue and caterer to the photographer and DJ — were able to switch to their new date of Saturday, July 11, this year.
The couple — who started dating in 2012 as students at Mt. Vernon High School — had planned an April 25 wedding at Plum Creek Golf Club in Carmel. They realized they had to change their plans about five weeks before the big event.
“We had a couple of guests cancel their flights, and so we just started to kind of see it dwindling out from underneath us,” she said.
Knowing they didn’t want to have the wedding without all 200 of their guests, they opted to reschedule.
“We wanted to have everybody there. We wanted the wedding we planned. We knew from the get-go it was going to have to be postponed,” McDowell said.
While they feel blessed to have had their rescheduled wedding date fall into place rather easily, McDowell woke up with a lot of sadness last Saturday, the day the wedding was originally supposed to take place.
“We were supposed to be preparing for a wedding, but we were sitting at home doing puzzles instead,” she said.
As they sat on their front porch, their friends surprised McDowell by pulling up in front of their house and dropping off gifts from a distance, and posted a video wishing the couple well on what would have been their special day.
Fisher also made his fiancee’s day infinitely better by playing the song that was supposed to be played for their ceremonial first dance, sharing the dance in their living room instead. He also invited her dad over for a special father-daughter dance, while her mom dropped off the same City Barbecue meal they would have been enjoying at their reception.
Fisher’s parents brought them cheesecake similar to what they planned to serve.
McDowell said the day turned out to be so special, she and Fisher will celebrate the date every year. “I could have been in my bed crying all day, but we instead decided to celebrate,” she said.
Fisher posted a sweet tribute to his bride-to-be on Facebook that day that’s sure to make all brides-to-be swoon: “So we were supposed to get married today. But we couldn’t. But… every day that I spend with this woman is the greatest day of my life. Every day is worth it just to wake up next to her. I don’t need a wedding today. I just need her.”
