Waterford — It may not have been the wedding of their dreams, but it was certainly one to remember.
Standing in front a cellphone streaming their ceremony onto Facebook Live, Taylor Palmer and Tom Ortolani married Friday in the midst of a worldwide pandemic.
It was their originally planned wedding date but instead of her dream gown, which she had bought earlier this year, Palmer wore a white business dress. She got her hair done Friday morning but not the way she originally had envisioned. Ortolani wore a gray suit with a green tie, as planned. The two exchanged vows and rings as they normally would have.
But in a new world dictated by social distancing due to the coronavirus, the couple stood alone inside Great Neck Country Club, their friends and family watching from computers miles away.
“This isn’t what we envisioned at all, and it’s been a range of emotions,” Palmer said by phone from the couple's Waterford home on the eve of their wedding. “But we were ready to be married. ... I have never seen a relationship like the one we have. He is the flap to my jack. The Bud to my Light. He’s everything. I don’t know really how to put it quite into words, but when we are together, there’s magic.”
Love at first sight
After Palmer, 30 and Ortolani, 28, met in the fall of 2018 at Mango’s Wood-Fired Pizza in Mystic, both said they knew it was love at first sight. So, when they became engaged a year later on Oct. 27, Palmer said she couldn’t wait through a long engagement to marry the man of her dreams.
The two immediately started planning their wedding, booking their venue at Villa Bianca in Seymour, just three days after their engagement, and setting the date for April 10, 2020.
“I was not wasting any time,” Palmer said. “We just wanted to be married.”
Other details quickly fell into place. Palmer found the dress of her dreams: a lacy, A-line gown with spaghetti straps. Her best friend from high school planned to officiate, and 160 of the couple's closest friends and family members were set to attend.
Palmer and Ortolani, who both work at Electric Boat, were becoming more excited with each passing week.
But less than a month before their wedding, the unfathomable happened. As schools and businesses shut down across the nation due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the couple had to make what so far has been the hardest decision of their lives: to cancel their dream wedding to protect their friends and family.
“I would never have dreamt any of this could happen in my lifetime,” Palmer said. “If you told me 10 years ago to 20-year-old me that 'Taylor, you are going have the wedding planned and then a global pandemic will break loose,' I would have said, 'Is Will Smith in this movie?' Little did I know.”
But while thousands of couples in similar situations over the last month have decided to postpone their wedding to the fall or next year, Palmer said she and her fiancé didn’t want to wait to be husband and wife and were determined to marry on the day they originally planned.
Still, the process of canceling their wedding, which meant calling all their friends and family to tell them the news, and a lot of tears, has been an emotional roller-coaster, Palmer said. “But we have grown closer because of this. All that really matters in the end is celebrating our love with each other.”
The couple said though they still plan to have a big party once the virus passes, they planned a quiet night in on the night of their wedding. Ortolani’s parents had bought the two a takeout meal from Tony D’s in New London to enjoy, while Ortolani said he made sure to buy a small cake from Stop & Shop.
“We will have our own party, we will dance in the kitchen, we will still have our first dance. Then, knowing us, we will be in our sweatpants,” Palmer said Thursday, laughing. “Really, all I ever wanted was to be Tom’s wife. Even before I knew he existed, I just wanted to be his wife. Tomorrow, I get to be that, no matter what happens in life it’s going to be from this point forward him and I together.”
Wedding day
On Friday afternoon, as Palmer put on her high-heeled shoes before walking out the door to drive to their wedding, she said the process has still been a roller-coaster.
“One of my bridesmaids showed up this morning, in her bridesmaid’s dress, with her husband and knocked on our door just to say happy wedding day,” Palmer said, tearing up. “And I just sobbed. Just completely sobbed.”
Palmer’s mother, Barbara, also was in tears Friday as she hugged her daughter and future son-in-law moments before the two drove off to be married.
“Taylor is my first born, so seeing her and this whole thing that’s going on, it’s hard,” Barbara Palmer said from her front door Friday before sitting on her couch with her husband to watch the ceremony. “This is not how I thought my daughter’s wedding was going to be where I would be sitting in my house watching it. So now I’m getting emotional again, but it is what it is. We can’t stop the corona. But I’m glad she is doing what she’s doing.”
The couple’s officiant, New London Superior Court Judge Ken Shluger, spoke during Friday’s ceremony of the couple’s determination through the ups and downs this past month. “It would be impossible to not acknowledge that this is not the wedding Taylor and Tom envisioned. But life has a way of throwing curveballs at us, and Taylor and Tom’s ability to adapt and persevere says a whole lot about who they are as a couple.”
“Us going through with this, I believe, is a testament to how much we are meant to be together,” Palmer said Thursday night. “I’m the worry wart and Tom is the calm to my crazy, especially when it comes to this virus. He has been my rock and the rope to pulling back to being sane again. I don’t know what I do for him, but it really is a testament.”
“If we can get through getting married and making this commitment to each other through such a crazy, crazy time in our world history, then there must be nothing we can’t do,” she said.
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Love in the time of coronavirus: Waterford couple determined to marry - theday.com
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