CHAPIN, S.C. — Many events have been cancelled amid the coronavirus pandemic, but one Chapin couple made the most of their ruined plans.
Emily Perry and Jacob Cockrell had all of their wedding details perfected. They were going to have a big gathering on Lake Norman in North Carolina with all of her closest family and friends. Then the coronavirus pandemic hit.
“People were like, you always have to have a hiccup at a wedding … something has to go wrong," bride Emily laughs. "And literally, nothing went wrong other than the coronavirus.”
Many of their guests began to cancel as states were locking down and then North Carolina, where the wedding was to take place, locked down. So the couple quickly redirected.
Emily and her mother Janet had been the caretakers of her grandmother before she passed away last year, and it was at her grandmother’s house on Lake Murray that Jacob, her now husband, proposed to her.
“It was like a week before the wedding and we said ‘we’re going to go ahead and do it on the dock," Emily's mother Janet Thiel said.
Immediate family and a few close friends gathered on Emily’s grandparents dock on Lake Murray and proceeded with the wedding.
Everything about the event was intimate and sentimental. The dress was her mother’s wedding dress, the cake topper was her grandparents from their wedding, and even the flower decorations were put together by a retired florist who lives next door and saw what they were planning.
“It's just crazy how it all came together," Emily remembers. "Every day was like ‘ok what’s the news update? What is SC doing now? How many people can be together? Well they’re saying that immediate family can be together so can we pull this off?’ It wound up happening exactly when it could happen. It was just completely perfect.”
Though thrown for a loop, Emily could not have anticipated a more perfect wedding.
“Everything against it and it came together and I have to say… it was beautiful and she was beautiful," Emily's father says.
