A Filipino wedding in the Netherlands, amid Europe’s COVID-19 lockdown

Some people say the year of 2020 is cursed. They say it is bad luck to get married in the year that brought the world to its knees and nations, in shambles. The world has yet to overcome COVID-19.  

In the first half of the year, my fiancé Carlos and I decided to cancel our May wedding. We planned to get married in in Basco, Batanes — our hometown — atop the hills of Marlboro, facing the Pacific ocean, with our families and closest friends as our witnesses.

But it soon dissolved as the pandemic became more widespread. The Netherlands went into a lockdown in March. The Philippines, too, imposed travel restrictions and city lockdowns. All this rendered all our wedding plans useless.

In those early months, we were both deep in debt and depression; a year’s worth of wedding preparations went to waste.

But as the pandemic carried on, so did we.

Wedding preparations during a lockdown

We are based in the Netherlands and in March, the country underwent an “intelligent lockdown." All cafes, restaurants, and even sex clubs were closed. People were instructed to keep a 1.5 meters distance at all times as the number of infections reached the 1,000 mark.

We initially thought that the measures were working and truly enough, in May, regulations started ease.

As the situation improved, we decided to push through with our wedding in the Netherlands, pencil-booked for October, on the same day as my birthday. We chose to get married, and get married fast, because the unpredictability of marrying in the Philippines became more real.

We arranged a wedding application at the Embassy of the Philippines in The Hague. Our marriage requirement documents were already expired so we had to restart all the paperwork application. In total, we waited two weeks for  the documents to get delivered to the Netherlands.

It was a surreal time to prepare for a wedding. We could not meet in big groups, so our friends staged several small surprise parties to celebrate our wedding. They knew that we could not arrange a huge celebration because of COVID-19 risks, so they made sure we had pockets of tiny parties in between.

A month before our wedding, Carlos and I found ourselves blanketed with love. Our friends in Utrecht arranged a DIY photo shoot, those in Amsterdam and Oosterhout threw us a bridal shower and a bachelor's party. And then there was the Save the Date party from our dear friends all over the Netherlands. We may not be able to celebrate with our families in the Philippines, but our friends made sure we were not alone.

A DIY Wedding: We did-it-ourselves!

Just when we thought the situation was improving and measures were being eased, the number of COVID-19 cases in The Netherlands spiked. Seven months after the first lockdown in March, the situation turned for the worse, with many European nations saying we were in the Second Wave.

Two weeks before our wedding, the Netherlands went into another partial lockdown. The eight guests that we were allowed to invite in the Embassy was reduced to four. We could not arrange any reception or celebrate in any way as restaurants closed down.

But despite the series of unfortunate events, our wedding turned out perfect.

No florist? We made our own bouquet from wild flowers I'd been drying for two months in our cupboard.

No stylist? I made my own hair barrette from a discarded piece of wood and some flowers. I wore a simple white dress and a Philippine flag-inspired ear cuff from my sister.

No make-up artist? My best friend and neighbor turned my hair into a piece of art.
 
No photographer? We mounted our own photo shoot with just a simple tripod, a lanky, old DSLR, our mobile phones and our determination.

Our pictures turned out beautiful, too. Shooting in a park across our hotel, the autumn leaves and the greyish blue skies served as our background; the mud and small puddles of water, our stage. The groomsman happily took on the duties of the photographer and the videographer.

We did not have our families with us physically, but they were all present on Zoom. Carlos’s mother was present all the way from Saudi Arabia. My family in the Philippines even dressed up for the occasion and decorated their Zoom background with balloons spelling the word “CONGRATS.”

My sister, my maid-of-honor, got me a cake and prepared a feast so they can celebrate with us in our home in Cainta. My girlfriends in Manila, Singapore, Amsterdam, and Kuala Lumpur, put on their makeup and their ring lights to look their best, even from just in front of the laptop.

It was a beautiful day to get married, and I am glad that technology was able to connect us all despite thousands of miles of distance and difference in time zones.

Our wedding coordinator, Gladys, arranged an intimate program where our parents, siblings and close friends were able to give us their greetings and blessings. My mom, thanked our ninang, Tita Elena, for being our guardian, and for standing there on behalf our parents. One of our witnesses and my dear friend pulled out a cake after the ceremony, to celebrate not only our marriage but also my birthday. We sang both Filipino and Dutch birthday songs.

The afterparty was even more unique. Staying in a hotel in The Hague to celebrate with our friends, our wedding reception turned into a pajama party.

We had Filipino food delivered to our hotel room where we had a small and traditional boodle fight made corona-proof thanks to having our own utensils and plates). The hotel even offered free champagne and desserts. Everything was all right.

Our wedding was fraught with a string of unlucky events, and yet, somehow, things worked out naturally. As a deeply distressed bride in the past months, I would like to share the secret of how we managed to pull off a wedding in Europe amidst a lockdown. I wrote it in my wedding vow so I wouldn’t forget what we had been through. I am glad to share it with every anxious couple out there:

Love in the time of corona is inconvenient
But it perseveres. It fights.
It works hard and it endures

We  are not perfect, but we are always kind. And we love each other hard. So hard and true that I know that no matter what happens, from this day onwards, nothing can ever be that bad because we have each other.

— LA, GMA News