Long-term care home worker postpones wedding until 2021 due to coronavirus concerns

Jillyan Clark was supposed to get married on Aug. 2. Then came COVID-19.

Clark, who works in a long-term care home in Regina, said her job made the decision to postpone her wedding date an easy one.

“It’s important for safety, of not only ourselves but our family and the people I work with,” Clark said. “I see a lot of vulnerable people and to have a big gathering or any gathering right now makes it risky. We’re just trying to protect everyone we love.”

But knowing that postponing her special day was the right thing to do didn’t make it any less difficult to deal with.

“It has been challenging, for sure,” Clark said.

Clark and her fiance, Colton Hahn, will have been together for seven years by the time they finally tie the knot on their new date in May 2021.

“That’s why we said we can wait a couple more months to get married … we’ve been dating quite a long time now,” Clark said with a chuckle.

The pair met through a mutual friend.

“We’ve been kind of inseparable ever since,” she said.

Clark and Hahn got engaged on their five-year anniversary while on a trip to Mexico in February 2019.

“We did this series of (36) questions … It was just kind of this game we had started playing on every big occasion and when we were in Mexico … we finished the 36 questions and he said he had a 37th question,” Clark said.

“He gave a piece of paper to me and it said, ‘Will you marry me?’ ”

Clark said she didn’t see the proposal coming, despite their long relationship.

“People think it’s crazy I had no inclination but I didn’t. It caught me off guard,” she said. “We’re excited to start our new journey here together when that happens.”

The two say they realized they would have to postpone their upcoming nuptials after hearing the global COVID-19 pandemic had reached Saskatchewan.

“It became very close to home and we just realized, ‘Most of our guests live in Saskatchewan and if this keeps increasing, by August I don’t think we can have our wedding space with the number of people we wanted,’ ” Clark said. “That was the big moment but we kind of had prepared each other for it being postponed.”

Clark said they had already sent out invitations to about 180 guests.

“It was going to be a big wedding and we had everything booked and lined up,” Clark said. “We just wanted that big wedding and unfortunately we might not get it.”

It was a whirlwind for the couple to switch plans to the following year.

“The 2021 wedding season was already quite booked up and then on top of COVID couples that are postponing their weddings to 2021, we realized we should probably have a backup plan,” she explained.

Luckily, Clark and Hahn have been able to rearrange most of their vendors to their new date next year.

“I won’t sugarcoat it; it has been stressful just to line up everyone we’ve booked so we wouldn’t lose any deposits,” Clark said. “That was the biggest thing so really, we were limited on dates.”

The two have also dealt with another disheartening development. One of Hahn’s groomsmen lives in South Korea. With COVID-19 restrictions in place, Clark and Hahn are still not sure whether he will be able to arrange a flight for their new wedding date.

“If he does come, it would mean that he’s living here for 14 days and then when he gets back, he isolates again for 14 days … That’s a lot of time off work,” Clark said.

“You just have to be optimistic and hope that when the time comes, you can have a big celebration with all of your loved ones.”

Now, with a new date finally set for her wedding and most details established, Clark said she has finally been able to relax.

“I’m starting to feel more excited; we both are,” she said. “It has kind of been a journey.”

She said her fiance and her will most likely find a way to celebrate their relationship on what would have been their original wedding date.

To other COVID brides trying to decide how, when or if they will tie the knot this wedding season, Clark offered a simple piece of advice: “Do whatever your heart tells you to do.”