In a story entirely fitting for 2020, a bride would not let her positive COVID-19 diagnosis stop her from getting married.

California couple Lauren (29) and Patrick Delgado (27) have been engaged since May 2019, and had already downscaled their big day due to the pandemic. They changed their venue and guest list three times, and took it in their stride as they were excited to marry. However, things took a turn for the worse when Lauren tested positive for COVID-19 only five days before their wedding.

“Everything that could go wrong did go wrong,” Lauren told NBC News. “”I was really saddened because everything we had planned was already getting cancelled.”

Since their marriage license was scheduled to expire the day after their wedding, the pair decided to go ahead with their big day while Lauren quarantined at her mother’s house.

Their November 21 wedding was so impromptu that Lauren didn’t even have enough time to pick up her wedding dress, and instead just wore a white dress straight from her closet.

Patrick stood outside the home as Lauren said her vows from her second floor bedroom window. Their 10 guests, who had all tested negative, wore face masks and stood socially distanced outside Lauren’s window or watched from their parked cars to enjoy the 45-minute ceremony.

In place of holding hands, the pair held each end of a flower-decorated ribbon as they exchanged their vows.

“It was the most 2020 wedding I have ever shot during Covid-19,” said Jessica Jackson, the wedding photographer.

Marriage has been a time-honoured tradition for centuries. While normally considered to be between two consenting adults, it seems marriage has a loose definition in today’s world.

It’s not only humans tying the knot with each other. Over the years, people have fallen in love with inanimate objects and decided to take the next step in their relationship by getting married. Here are a few of the unexpected things people have tied the knot with.

The Eiffel Tower

Erika La Tour Eiffel must have a thing for the tall, strong and silent type because she said ‘I do’ to the iconic Eiffel Tower. The bride is known as an “objectum sexual”, a person who falls in love with inanimate objects. Before the Eiffel Tower, she was in love with Lance, a bow that lead her to become a world champion in archery.

If you’d like to know more about Erika, there is a whole documentary called “The Woman Who Married the Eiffel Tower,” that tracks her life and her love story with this iconic landmark.

Amanda Large Teague from Ireland claimed to have tied the knot with the ghost of a 300-year-old Haitian pirate she met while meditating for the first time. She is convinced the pirate was that of Jack Teague, who some believe to be the pirate who inspired the character of Captain Jack Sparrow in the ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ franchise.

After months of communicating, the pair married aboard a boat on the Atlantic Ocean in 2016. Unfortunately, the pair did not last, and went their separate ways in 2018.

A smartphone

It seems this guy saw the movie “Her” one too many times. Back in 2016, Aaron Chervenak from Los Angeles travelled to The Little Vegas Chapel in Nevada to say ‘I do’ to his cellphone.

His marriage, while not legally recognised, was done to make a point about society’s growing obsession and reliance on smartphones.

A sex-doll

Kazakhstani Bodybuilder Yuri Tolochko recently married his sex-doll girlfriend Margo after proposing back in December 2019. The pair were meant to marry sooner, but were forced to postpone due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In an interview, Tolochko claimed to have paid for Margo to have plastic surgery, as she “began to develop a complex” after receiving criticism over her looks following their engagement announcement.

“She has changed a lot. At first it was hard to accept, but I got used to it later on. It was at a real clinic with real doctors,” he said. 

 

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A tree

Back in 2018, mother of two Kate Cunningham said ‘I do’ to an elder tree at Rimsose Valley Country Park in order to bring attention to how green spaces in the area were being destroyed.

The Daily Mail reports that she changed her last name by deed poll to ‘Elder’ after the species of the tree she married.

The marriage idea began as a way to prevent the local government from building a bypass road that would run through the Valley.

Despite Daft Punk’s famous lyric, it seems that many newlyweds aren’t ‘up all night to get lucky’.

A recent campaign by Compare.bet/en-au/ surveyed 980 couples across 44 countries with the highest populations to find out if they consummated their marriage on the night they tied the knot. They then created a map showing the top 10 countries most likely to consummate their marriage on their wedding night, and the bottom 10 countries who didn’t find the time to make it ‘official’.

The results are in:

The newlyweds most interested in getting jiggy straight after they tied the knot were from Finland, with a whopping 89% saying they consummated their marriage on their wedding night.

Following closely behind was Egypt, with 88% of couples saying they had sex on their first night being married, whilst 12% didn’t.

In third place was unsurprisingly the hot-blooded Brazilians, with 87% doing the deed on their first night as man and wife. South Africans ranked pretty high, with 82% consummating the marriage on wedding night.

Japan and Russia had the second and third lowest percentage of consummating couples. And it was bad news for the Australians, who came trailing in last place, with only 36% getting laid on their wedding night, compared to 64% of couples who didn’t mark the occasion.

Picture: Unsplash