FRENCH CAMP, Miss. — Planning a wedding can take months or even years. For Anna Stackhouse of Mississippi, those plans came to a screeching halt earlier this month as COVID-19 spread across the United States and other countries.
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Instead of calling off their wedding, Stackhouse and her groom, Mitchell, cut back on their guest list and got married over the weekend.
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“At first it was just heartbreaking because we wanted everyone we knew, or friends and family to be there,“ Stackhouse said.
Instead of canceling everything, the couple decided to pull off the wedding and still practice social distancing. It was a much more intimate setting than Stackhouse first envisioned.
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“We went from about 350 people to about 10 people. We didn’t have any food for sanitary purposes. We wanted to keep everyone as safe as possible. We did have my grandparents there. We wanted to take extra precaution,” she said.
Ten people attended, and technology allowed friends and family to take part from afar.
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A videographer live-streamed the wedding and captured everything from Stackhouse's first reveal with her dad to the exchange of vows as the couple said their I do’s in Stackhouse's hometown of French Camp.
“We did have some of our friends and family on Zoom. They got to watch the whole ceremony and we got to talk with them after we got married. It was cool because they weren’t technically there,” she said.
But it didn’t end there. A line of cars drove by to support the newlyweds.
“It just looked like it went on for miles and miles," she said. “We were sitting in front of a home and we got to just got to talk to everybody. They were just congratulating us. People brought gifts and we had a sweet little couple who actually brought a boat. We had to cancel our cruise that we were going to go on. That was really sweet and kind of just like a funny moment. They said, ‘Since you couldn’t go on your cruise, we are going to bring a boat to you guys.’ It was just so overwhelming, and it brought tears to my eyes to see my tiny community come together and share encouragement and support for me and Mitchell.”
