There was a moment in time when Alyssa and Craig Lange thought their big dream wedding filled with 180 of their friends and family might never actually happen.
“We got engaged in July of 2019 and had set a wedding date of September 26, 2020,” says Syracuse native Craig of what we all now know turned out to be a dicey wedding date. The couple had met in New York City, but had their hearts set on tying knot in, and moving to, Saratoga, the bride’s hometown. It was the timing that threatened that dream from coming true.
“The day we moved out of our city apartment to move up here was the day the state of emergency was enacted over the pandemic,” says Alyssa. So they postponed their wedding date to June of 2021, moved in with Alyssa’s parents, and waited. And waited some more. As the date neared, it began to look like COVID would still be making it impossible to have a big get-together, even all of those months later.
“The second time we weren’t sure if we would have to cut the guest list or if people would have to be in masks, and there were still a lot of regulations,” Alyssa says. “We wanted it to come to fruition in the most normal way and we were thinking of everyone’s safety first. And we obviously have grandparents and friends to think about, and you had to take all that into consideration.”
So they switched their date once again to October 1, 2021. And as the old adage goes; the third time was the charm.
“When we moved it to October, the Delta variant had started up and we thought, ‘Oh no, here we go again!’” Craig says. “That’s when we decided it was happening one way or another—with all the bells and whistles or without.”
Luckily, things worked out, bells and all, and the couple got the big day they always dreamed of. Nearly all their invited guests were able to come, except one groomsman who was stuck in Ireland due to travel restrictions. The couple added some touching tributes to Craig’s mom, Martha, who had passed away from cancer since their original wedding date. And heaven smiled, as they say, when the sun came out during the outdoor “I do’s.”
“I tried to hold on to the visions we had for the day,” says Alyssa, who was at the time trying to juggle switching around all of her vendors for the second and final time. “Looking back now, it was everything I could have hoped for. When the day arrived, everything kind of disappeared. Just walking into that ceremony and feeling the love was special on another level.”