The March 21, 2020, wedding of Julie Samuels and Joe Hillyer in Montclair, N.J., ushered in an unparalleled time for the Vows and Mini-Vows columns. Because of the coronavirus pandemic and its crowd-size and social-distancing mandates, couples had to get creative about how to pull off weddings.
Ms. Samuels and Mr. Hillyer had their nuptials on the front porch of their home as a honking convoy of friends and family drove in circles around the block cheering them on.
A couple who met at the Dunkin’ drive-through window in Edmond, Okla. — she as an employee, he as a customer — said their vows through that same window with guests watching from the parking lot. The fashion model and labor activist Sara Ziff married the photographer Reed Young at a train station in Philipstown, N.Y. And some couples married with no one else in the room, their officiant beaming in over Zoom.
Their reasons for not wanting to wait varied: to honor a long-awaited wedding date, secure health insurance or to follow their dream of starting a family.
If weddings looked different five years ago, the permutations of romance that led to them held steady. Canceling weddings became commonplace. Love endured. Here is a look at four couples who married during Covid despite the difficulties involved, and their reflections on how saying “I do” at such a fraught time shaped the relationships they’re in now.