A Covid-19 Wedding

Neil Fitzpatrick   -  

Our student minister, Ed Hannah, is getting married to Amelia this Friday night.

Sadly, the Covid-19 restrictions limit the number of people in attendance to just 5. I asked Ed about this…

Tell us about Amelia and how you came to be engaged.

Well, Amelia is pretty fantastic, and so once I worked that out, I asked her to marry me! She said yes, and so here we are! Amelia is a High School Science teacher, who studied at UNSW and we got to know each other playing frisbee with other young Christians while we were on campus.

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What will the wedding look like on Friday Night?

It will look beautiful! It will be a candlelit, sunset wedding at Wild Street Maroubra (where Amelia went to church). Obviously, with the restrictions, our ceremony will be very small, but still a special time of making promises to each other before God. It might not have all the bells and whistles, but it will have all the bits that matter most.

The wedding was planned for 4 July. Why did you move the date forward? 

We realised that engagements are normally used to plan and prepare for the things that go into a wedding. With the advent of the pandemic, a lot of our plans were derailed. With the uncertainty of when “normal life” might resume, we made a decision to act on the information we had, and decided it was best to get married at this earlier date.

Along with the joy of being married, what are the main things you are feeling the loss of? 

Amelia has been at Wild St Maroubra for the past 9 years. Moving church in the midst of a pandemic is a very strange thing. The loss of that fellowship and lack of closure is tough. I am finding it hard to deal with the lack of family at our wedding. My family is quite spread out, and times like this are when we all get together, but not this time, which is a great loss.

What can we pray for you?

Pray that we will make plenty of time to invest in our marriage, especially in these early days. We are moving into quite a small place together, and the present restrictions mean that we will be in there together a LOT. Please pray that we would be quick to forgive, and even quicker to ask for forgiveness.

Please do pray for Ed and Amelia.

Neil