Life in the Time of Covid-19
ON GETTING MARRIED
We had about three weeks to plan the entire wedding ... ourselves! Yes, DIY!
FRANCES UY
Restaurateur
Not in my wildest dreams did I think my wedding would happen like this. But, it was perfect in its own way. My husband Marco and I decided to get married about six months into Covid-19 so it didn’t really disrupt any wedding plans. Initially we were going to do a small civil ceremony at the city hall, but the more we thought about it, the more we realised that we wanted to celebrate with those who mean the most to us.
There was lots of anxiety involved, especially because we were going to have a gathering of more than 10 people. Thankfully, in San Francisco reliable testing is easy to get, so that gave us peace of mind. A bunch of us took Covid tests in the days leading up to the wedding and I was super nervous that someone would end up positive. Throwing a safe celebration was definitely the biggest challenge. Due to Covid-19, we had about three weeks to plan the entire wedding … ourselves! Yes, DIY! We chose to do everything ourselves to minimise contact with anyone outside our bubble.
My focus with Marco was the overhaul of the backyard. His brothers Maui, Mateo and Mico Uy worked day in and day out to help us renovate our backyard— together we went from cleaning, to sanding, to painting, to staining, to gardening. Eventually we realised we couldn’t overhaul the entire place ourselves and hired my tito’s construction team at the last minute. They did all the difficult parts, thankfully.
As a part of backyard makeover Marco and I visited several nurseries and learnt how to design a garden! We had to drive out ourselves to pick up 300 planks of redwood in order to transform the space. In the days leading up to the wedding, there were fires that broke out all over California. We had to race to get to the Santa Cruz Mountains (about 1.5 hours away) to pick up the wood in time before the seller evacuated! The fires were terrifying! We were lucky and thankful that the air quality only got really bad shortly after the wedding. That day that everyone saw on social media, when the sky was overtaken by darkness and an eerie hue of red, came three days after the wedding—I was incredibly relieved!
Some of my best girls (Monina Gangoso, Timmi Cabacang, Becca Garcia, Sabrina Chiongbian, Brigette Balagot) got-together to brainstorm the total vision and plan the decor and flowers. In fact, it was so personal that
