The ‘Lockdown Love Story’. I’ve was just reading one today and it reminded me I’ve been meaning to write about Sana and Al for ages!

One of the many great ideas Al & Sana had was to design their Order of Ceremony as a ‘Lockdown Love Story’, and they asked Al’s nephew Sully to hand it out. Sully kept asking if that meant his role was ‘the paper boy’. Confused at first, it soon dawned on Sana and Al that he meant ‘page boy’, but the name stuck.

This isn’t Sully, by the way; it’s Sana’s brother Neil, who also got a great job; he got to write and tell their story!

As Neil explained, Sana and Al met the traditional way; online. Sana had just got back from working in New York where she’d been given some valuable advice. “Men are like taxis. When they’re available, their light goes on”. There were a lot of men with their lights on post-Covid, so Sana decided to hop on board a dating app to give herself a last chance at happiness before she bought a cat…

Weekly Zoom calls became long, daily FaceTime chats, before Al & Sana finally had their first date on the bank holiday precisely two years before their wedding day… and I don’t think I need to tell you the rest of that story!

I was delighted when Al sent me this ‘teaser’ collection of Ricky Baillie’s photos, saying, “thank you for your patience with Indie, who was trying to steal the show. I think she wanted to do your job 😂But seriously, thank you so much for everything you did for us in preparing for the day and leading us and our family and friends through the service.  

We both loved it, and we’ve had such fantastic feedback from everyone who was there about how lovely and jovial the service was. We even had some of our devout Catholic friends giving their children ‘permission’ to have a non-religious service after seeing ours.

For us, making a bespoke service that meant so much to us personally has really started our married life off well and as we mean to continue it. Remembering why we fell in love after we first met, everything we’ve done and been through together since, and preparing us to wake each day as a team, as well as individuals. Thank you for everything you did on the day. It was all just such a whirlwind. Everyone – including you – said it would fly by, but wow! 

That’s the best kind of wedding, Al. Someone once told me that the experience of getting married is akin to being under shellfire. You’re not sure if it lasted five seconds, five minutes or five hours, and when it’s over, you can’t believe it happened! Thank you so much for your kind words and for the sneak preview of Ricky’s pics. PS – remind Indie to call me when she gets an agent; I predict a big future on the stage for that one!