It was to be the wedding of Moe’s dreams: A beautiful church, her cherished partner, their beloved priest, and 70 of their closest relatives and friends there to witness and celebrate.

Then the coronavirus struck, upending the dreams of brides everywhere. Like so many others, the Thomases’ wedding had to be postponed.

“There were people coming from Portland, Oregon, and Oklahoma and Pennsylvania,” Moe Thomas said. “We needed to give people a heads-up. We erred on the side of caution.”

Last weekend, their wedding date came and went. One friend from church delivered a bouquet of flowers. Others sent messages of love and support.

Nothing like a global pandemic to make you realize “what’s really important about a wedding,” Moe Thomas said.

“I spent days: Should I do the olive green or the forest green? Right now, I don’t care what color the napkins are,” she said. “I care that I’m not going to be able to hug the people who love us. That’s the thing that really hurts.”

According to the state Division of Vital Records Administration, 771 couples got married in New Hampshire between March 24 and June 10 (some additional marriages may not have been recorded yet). That’s fewer than half of the 1,603 weddings that took place during the same period last year.

Long-distance love

The Thomases met online. Even that was a fluke.

On his dating profile, Barnaby, who was living in Maine, accidentally added an extra zero in his search parameters for the miles he was willing to travel to meet someone: 200, not 20.

When he saw Maureen’s photo (he calls her by her given name), he said, “I felt like she was the one as soon as I looked into her eyes.

“And then I saw how far she was away.”

He kept coming back to her photo and finally contacted her. A few days later, they met for breakfast in Portsmouth, spending hours talking and strolling the streets on an unseasonably warm December day.

The rest, Moe Thomas said, is the stuff of every rom-com ever.

On May 20, 2017, the couple returned to Moe’s house after a dinner date. “It was the right time, so I took her hand and I led her into our backyard and I knelt down,” Barnaby recalled. “I said you’ve made me so happy. Please make me happy for the rest of my life. Please marry me.”

She said yes.

Their wedding is now set for Sept 5.

But things still don’t feel settled, the bride said, with state officials warning of a possible second coronavirus wave in the fall. So they don’t even know how many guests they’ll be able to invite come September. “It’s like trying to tap dance on quicksand,” Moe Thomas said.

“For me, I would be happy to marry this woman in God’s eyes, just us and our minister, and I’d be perfectly happy,” said Barnaby Thomas, who is 61. “Because for me, it’s the sacrament. But this lady wants a big church wedding, that’s what she has her heart set on, and I like making her happy.”

Moe Thomas, 58, said she feels worse for younger brides whose plans have been shattered. “This is their dream wedding and the love of their life, and they’ve invested so many years and so much money, and venues are canceling. ... Those are the brides I feel sorry for.”

Dream interrupted

Elizabeth Pasqual, 29, has been planning to get married since she was 12 years old. “I guess I always dreamed of a princess wedding,” she said.

As she got older, she said, all that became less important than finding the right person. And she found Chris Ellingson.

The couple got engaged at the Ice Castles in February 2019. “We were taking pictures and then he said OK, one more picture. Then he got down on one knee,” Pasqual said. “I cried happy tears.”

Her parents were happy to provide a big wedding, and 175 guests were invited to nuptials that were supposed to take place May 2.

In January, all their careful planning fell apart.

First, the venue they had chosen closed abruptly with no warning — and no refund.

They scrambled to move the wedding to Murphy’s Taproom & Carriage House in Bedford, where the staff was happy to accommodate their date and even their caterer. “We got it all situated and all planned out,” Ellingson said.

Then the pandemic hit.

In March, Pasqual said, “My dad called me, saying the wedding had to be postponed. It was awful.”

“We were in shock,” Ellingson said.

Again, they had to change plans, rescheduling all their vendors. Their wedding is now set for Aug. 29 at the Carriage House.

“We’re going on third time’s the charm,” said Ellingson, 24, who works in the advising department at Southern New Hampshire University. The couple met at Best Buy, where Pasqual works in customer service and Ellingson was working part-time.

A lot is still up in the air. According to the state guidance, wedding venues can operate at 50% capacity as of June 15. At the Carriage House, that would be 120 guests, according to Stacey Scott, the events director there.

Last week, Scott was studying the rules for reopening wedding venues. No coffee stations or hors d’oeuvres tables; buffets are allowed but only with staff serving the guests. There will be sanitizing stations, restrictions on bathroom use and signs warning anyone with symptoms to stay away as well as reminding guests about safe distancing.

And dancing? “Dancing is basically discouraged,” except between members of the same household, Scott said. “They have to be six feet apart,” she said. “I’m not quite sure how that’s going to work out.”

Planning the unknowable

Wedding planning is stressful under the best of circumstances. But this?

“Every time you think you have something to map out and plan, it all of a sudden changes,” Scott said.

She has had events canceled through October, including a few weddings. Some couples are planning to go to City Hall to get married legally and have a party later. “I’ve got a couple that are hanging on to see how it plays out,” she said.

That includes Pasqual and Ellingson.

The hardest part right now, Pasqual said, is not knowing just what their Aug. 29 wedding will look like. They don’t want to tell some guests they won’t be able to attend, but if they have to, she said, “I feel like people will definitely understand.”

“We want it to be safe and we want it to be a good, healthy environment for everybody so whatever we have to do to accommodate that, we’ll definitely do,” she said.

For now, they’re waiting to see what summer brings. “That’s what’s stressing me out the most,” Pasqual said. “I don’t want to make 20 centerpieces if I only need five.”

“Just changing on the fly, it’s been challenging and definitely stressful,” Ellingson said. “I’ll be very glad when the date comes.”

All their vendors have been accommodating, he said. And he’s learning a lot from this experience.

“Your patience has been tested with the amount of changes and uncertainty, but being open to it has been a good thing,” he said. “Being accepting of others around you. They’re there to help out and they’ve all been willing to lend a helping hand.”

While the new rules for weddings take effect June 15, there’s no guarantee they will still be in place come August or September, the Carriage House’s Scott said. And she said, “I think there are still people that are not going to want to come out in crowds. It depends on how close they are to the family and friends.”

Keeping faith, perspective

The Thomases, too, are busy working out contingency plans, including something that’s been dubbed “mini-mony” — a wedding ceremony that adheres to social distancing rules, with no more than 10 guests. Between the officiant, organist and the couple’s five adult children, that pretty much makes the guest list, if it happens.

Moe Thomas, a former news anchor and co-host for WGIR radio, said she wonders what that would be like. “Imagine the wedding album of us in an empty church,” she said. “It’s just a time capsule of the period that we’re in right now.

“In some ways, that’s really kind of crazy cool.”

If that does happen, she said, they’ll have a big reception for family and friends, “God willing, when the Earth is back to normal.”

The Rev. Dr. Marjorie Gerbracht-Stagnaro, rector at Grace Episcopal Church, said she’s glad Moe and Barnaby Thomas have had each other during these troubled times. “They’ve been each other’s saving grace,” she said. “They’re just so happy they found each other. That’s really all that matters.”

The Thomases will get their big church wedding, Gerbracht-Stagnaro promised. “It will happen. We just don’t know when it will happen,” she said.

Their faith sustains them, Barnaby Thomas said. “This may sound old-fashioned, but we hold hands at night in bed in the dark and we pray together,” he said. “God has united us. We just need our pastor to do her part.”

In these strange, unsettled times, he’s keeping things in perspective.

A wedding, he said, is “you dedicating yourself to the other person, and so in the end having hundreds of people there, or some fancy this or that, is less important than two people making a commitment for the rest of their lives to each other.”

“We have to remember that either our parents or our grandparents got married during the Depression, and they wanted a grand wedding and they ended up getting married in the parlor of one of their parents’ home because that’s all that could happen right then,” he said.

“But those marriages lasted. Those marriages were solid. We need to remember that.”

swickham@unionleader.com