After the COVID-19 pandemic cancelled cruises and honeymoons worldwide, this couple wouldn’t let it stop their fun. While still exercising responsible self-quarantine, they decided to ‘seas’ the day and throw their own cruise from the comfort of their home.
To celebrate their 53rd wedding anniversary, Norma and Dave Trill, both 74, from Melbourne had planned a 10-day cruise. However, as the coronavirus continued to spread, their trip was cancelled.
Despite this, however, the couple decided to go ahead with their cruise, albeit from indoors. In a video shared online, the couple can be seen with their feet up in front of their TV, where a video of the ocean is playing. The pair clink their glasses of wine to the good life.
With the coronavirus sweeping through almost every nation, strict restrictions are in place to keep those who are most vulnerable safe. The elderly are one of the most at risk groups. This Lake Waccamaw woman made the best of a difficult situation, and managed to give her grandfather some good news despite visitor restrictions at his care facility.
The recently engaged Carly Boyd desperately wanted to share her good news with her grandfather. Since visitors are not allowed at the care facility where he resides, she had to find her way around the restrictions. The result, caught on camera by the facility’s administrator, Gennie Parnell, was truly heartwarming.
Boyd stood at her grandfather’s window and showed off her engagement ring. She and her grandfather then touched hands against the glass of the window.
Credit: Premier Living and Rebab Center Info PageCredit: Premier Living and Rebab Center Info Page
“Even though visitation is restricted at this time, staff suggested an alternative,” said Premier Living & Rehab Center (the facility where Boyd’s grandfather resides) in a Facebook post.
“Emotional and memorable, for sure!! Thank you for allowing us to capture this special moment!!,” they added.
The bride-to-be is a student at Southeastern Community College, she is in pursuit of a qualification to become a Registered Nurse. Trevor Sellers, her fiance, is a contractor with the Department of Transportation. Hopefully this happy couple will have a chance to properly celebrate with Boyd’s grandfather soon!
In the meantime, however, the Community Activity Coordinator at the facility, April Bass, says that they are working hard to make sure residents still have contact with relatives.
Congrats to the happy couple, and the proud grandfather!
Image: Facebook / Primier Living & Rehab Center Info Page
The coronavirus pandemic has affected people beyond the scope of what we thought possible. A simple thing like spending time together has been taken away from many considered ‘high-risk’.
Such is the story of Bob and Nancy Shellard from Vernon, Connecticut. The pair celebrates their 67th wedding anniversary this year. However, due to the Covid-19 outbreak, Bob was not allowed inside the nursing home Nancy is staying in. The governor of Connecticut had banned nursing home visits for 30 days for concern of the health of the elderly.
The couple have never spent their anniversary apart, and Bob was not about to allow this to be the first time. He decided to celebrate outside Nancy’s window at the nursing home by holding up a sign that read “I’ve loved you 67 years and still do. Happy Anniversary.”
In response, Nancy sent air kisses and waves from inside the nursing home.
“It makes me feel bad because I want her down with me and I know she can’t be,” Bob told NBC Connecticut.
Speaking to NBC Connecticut, the couple’s daughter Laura said, “They have always been an inspiration to us and I think just seeing every year go by that they still express it in some way on their anniversary.”
“It’s just been an example for us, for all of us of kids. So all four of us have really learned a lot from them and I can only hope that I have half as much as what they have shared over the years.”
For some, fast food is love, fast food is life. Clearly this couple believes this, so much so that they decided to hold their wedding reception at their favourite fast-food burger joint, Whataburger.
Sharon Arteaga and Dylan Welch of Corpus Christi, Texas have been together for five years. When they first met on a night out, they ended their evening with a meal at Whataburger. Since then, the pair continued to visit this burger joint and would often have big discussions there.
“The Whataburger near my now-husband’s house at the time is a very busy one, so we spent time in the drive-through getting to know each other at first in the early days of us dating, but then over time we had more serious conversations,” Arteaga told Insider. “We talked about how we would want to raise future children together and got on the same page about a lot of things during late-night conversations at Whataburger.”
Fast forward a few years, the couple got engaged. Imagine their surprise when Whataburger ran a competition offering six couples across Texas the chance to tie the knot at various Whataburger locations. Sharon and Dylan won the grand prize, allowing them to marry at the flagship Whataburger location free of charge. The entire wedding was planned by the Whataburger team.
Credit: Instagram / Josh Huskin
“We let them do as much of what they wanted to do as possible. That was one of the best parts of having someone else put on our wedding for us,” Arteaga said.
Their wedding venue was decorated in the traditional white and orange Whataburger colours, and also featured a Whataburger-themed Ford Shelby Cobra getaway car, Dylan’s nephew as the onion ring bearer, and, of course, free Whataburger meals for the entire party. Their flower girls through petals out of french fry cartons.
There are men who are casual sports fans, then there are men who live and breathe sports. Those men always find a way to incorporate their love of the game into their lives, whether it’s using sports terms regularly or wearing sports jersey’s with every outfit.
This man took his passion for basketball (and his favourite team – the Chicago Bulls) several steps further. We’re not sure how he convinced his bride to agree!
Instead of walking in with his suit and tie, the man sported a warmup jumpsuit. Rather than a soft, romantic wedding song for his entrance, he opted for the Chicago Bulls entrance song (Sirius/Eye In The Sky).
As he made his way to the altar, he hi-fived guests sitting in the crowd and when he reached the alter he rips off his jumpsuit (very dramatically may we add) to reveal his tuxedo.
Barstool Chicago posted a video to Twitter, showing how everything went down. “Is this the greatest wedding entrance ever or is this the greatest wedding entrance ever,” they said.
If you’re interested in hearing the song in better quality, listen here:
Some may say the wedding is more about the bride’s personality than the grooms. We’re glad to see grooms starting to incorporate their interests into their big day!
Animals can be pretty pesky, but also make some amazing moments happen. During this couple’s wedding photoshoot, one giraffe decided to get in on the fun and steal the groom’s turban.
The hilarious moment took place at the Saddlerock Ranch in Malibu, California. While posing for pictures, the bride and groom were surprised when the animal reached down and plucked the grooms turban off his head. The giraffe’s name is Stanley, and he is an internet-famous member of the ranch. Celebrities such as the Kardashian/Jenner clan and comedienne Whitney Cummings are all huge fans of the beautiful creature.
Luckily, the bridal couple saw the humour in the situation.
Maryam Keyhani, a Toronto and Berlin based artist and milliner, is diversifying her creations by now including bridal hats or headpieces. For any bride who is looking to stand out and make a statement, Keyhani’s peices will provide a shock of inspiration.
In a 2018 interview with Vogue, Keyhani explained her love for hats by saying, “When I wear hats, I feel safe.” She described her use of hats as a shield between herself and the rest of the world. She is now stretching this love of hats all the way into the bridal industry in 2020.
According to Vogue, the event that inspired the creation of this bridal line was an appointment with a soon-to-be-married client who came in to fit on an ostrich feather crown. Keyhani was taken by the shift in her client’s attitude and outward emotions as she put the crown atop her head.
“You put on something extraordinary and you feel extraordinary. Isn’t that amazing to feel on your wedding day?,” she said to Vogue on March 10, 2020 .
About the headpiece line she said, “I spend a lot of time on the other side of reality, so fantasy is very much where these pieces exist.” And fantasy chic is exactly what you see when you lay your eyes on the look book.
Keyhani said she loves the classic, romantic bride but she also loves massively over-the-top dresses with elegant headpieces. “Whatever the dress a Keyhani creation is worn with, it’s meant to be an invitation to play, and gives a woman the chance to be the bride and the cake,” she said.
After her 1989 wedding, Dayton native Beth Griswold had her wedding dress preserved in the hopes that future generations would wear it after her. For years, the dress stayed in a box for safekeeping. However, when she finally opened the box three decades later, she found the wrong one.
The wedding dress, a traditional satin gown, had been professionally preserved and sent back to Griswold shortly after her wedding.
“We were told not to open up the dress. If you open up the dress, it will void the warranty. So for 30 years, I didn’t open up the dress,” Beth tells wdtn.com.
Griswold’s wedding dress was a family heirloom. It once belonged to Griswold’s mother, and the plan was for Griswold’s daughter Jessica to also wear the dress when she was ready to marry. The time had finally come for Jessica to be the third generation to wear this dress when she got engaged to her college sweetheart.
“My grandma had worn the same dress that my mom did, and it was beautiful and I loved it. And so, since I’ve been little, I’ve just anticipated I would wear that dress,” says bride-to-be Jessica Griswold.
Credit: wdtn.com
Finally, the mother and daughter duo opened the box together, but what they found was unexpected. Griswold had been sent someone else’s wedding dress.
“As we’re opening it, I looked and there was all this glitter, and I was like I don’t remember having glitter on my dress,” says Beth. “As we opened it more, and took it out of the box, we realized that it wasn’t my dress.”
Credit: wdtn.com
Devastated, Griswold contacted the preservers for help but they were no longer in business.
“They have no records. We don’t know if it got mixed up– It could be anywhere in the country,” says Beth. “The person’s dress who we have probably doesn’t even know that they don’t have their dress.”
The mother and daughter are now searching for the original dress, and continue to hold hopes it will come back to them.
This San Antonio couple found out that even the best laid plans often go awry. While on a cruise ship, their plans to marry on the Jamaican shore were ruined when their ship was unable to dock. Luckily for them, the cruise liner decided to throw them a surprise wedding.
San Antonio couple Liza Garcia and Theodore Herrera discovered that their wedding plans were unable to go through as a result of coronavirus fears. Jamaican officials are currently reviewing their policies amid the coronavirus outbreak, meaning that the cruise ship was unable to dock on their shores. Their plan of a Jamaican wedding dashed, Carnival Cruise Line decided to throw the couple an impromptu wedding aboard the ship, with Captain Francesco La Farina presiding over the ceremony.
“All of us on board were heartbroken when we learned that Liza and Theodore weren’t able to go ashore for their wedding. We got together as a team and promised to deliver the dream wedding that they deserve,” said Nikhil Khanna, hotel director on the Carnival Freedom. “At Carnival, we want to make sure our guests are provided the vacation of a lifetime and when these types of unforeseen circumstances come up, we take great pride in creating these surprises and delightful moments that our guests will remember forever.”
The bride was given complimentary spa and makeup appointments to prepare her for the big day. After the nuptials, the crew treated the guests and newlyweds to a buffet, three-tiered wedding cake, an ice-sculpture and a DJ.
Credit: Carnival Cruise LineCredit: Carnival Cruise LineCredit: Carnival Cruise Line
As if throwing them a wedding free of charge wasn’t enough, Carnival Cruise Line also reimbursed the couple for the funds for their cancelled wedding.
While they may not always end in Happily Ever After, these wedding reality shows are guaranteed to keep you entertained in the run up to your big day. They might also make you feel happier about your own wedding plans when you see what a disaster these can be by comparison.
Here are the best wedding reality TV shows we love to watch:
The recently released Netflix series follows a few single people as they enter the ‘experiment.’ In 10 days, they date a host of people from within ‘pods’ that only let them hear each others voices. By the end of the 10 days, six couples came out engaged without ever having seen each other. This might seem wild enough on it’s own but the series goes even further. The couples then move in together and meet each others families before walking down the aisle to be asked whether “love is truly blind” and they commit to the partner they have known for about a month. As expected, the drama is high as the couples find out who the other person really is.
Married at First Sight has been around since 2014 and is still going strong on TLC. The premise of the show is that couples are chosen and paired up and meet for the first time at the end of the aisle. After getting married, the couple are filmed settling into their new life and after six to eight weeks, they decide whether to stay married or get divorced. Despite being criticised for being a westernised version of arranged marriage for entertainment purposes, it is addictive and keeps you hooked trying to guess who will make it.
Wedding Bashers combines the voting fun of Idols with the high stakes pressure of a wedding. Four wedding experts go to different couples weddings and judge them on the entire event. They vote on the weddings, with their vote counting 50% with the South African audience voting from home. If you’re in the middle of planning your wedding, rewatching the first two seasons might be a great way to pick up some ideas, or realise what not to do.
Another South African wedding show, Our Perfect Wedding airs on Mzansi Magic and follows a couple planning their “perfect wedding” as they check off the items on their wish list. It’s a simple show that follows all the drama going into planning a wedding, with the couple declaring at the end whether or not their wedding was truly perfect. On top of being entertaining, watching other couples go through the entire wedding process might help you realise that your wedding will always have some stumbling blocks but in the end can still be perfect.
Unlike the others, this show doesn’t hop straight into marriage. An engaged couple travels the world to experience marriage customs from a variety of cultures. The main goal is to see whether these extremely differing styles of marriage will bring out the best or the worst in their relationship. While it has been criticised for its problematic depictions of other cultures, it is interesting to witness the ways marriage is different all over the world. It might just give you a little time to think what marriage means for you.
Although it’s in Afrikaans, this show has subtitles so you can follow on this wild ride. In every episode, a woman who is tired of waiting for her partner to propose secretly plans their wedding and then proposes to them in front of all their surprised guests. There really isn’t much to learn from this series, since you’ve already got the proposal and are planning the wedding but it’s pure reality TV entertainment.
