What No One Warned Me About

In my last weeks of seminary, during one of the ubiquitous shidduchim workshops, after the speeches on dating and shalom bayis, one of the teachers spoke about the stresses of the engagement stage. She warned us about how hard it is to navigate emotions and responsibilities and relationships, how tricky it is to balance life and engagement.

And for the first few weeks of my engagement, I kept thinking back to that speech. It was hard to manage it all: I was working full-time, taking a full semester at college, managing all my appointments and fittings, spending time with my chassan, and trying not to become that engaged girl who drops all her friends.

And then, suddenly, everything changed in a way no seminary workshop or panel ever prepared me for. Life took a turn for the crazy and unknown, as coronavirus put the whole world on pause, my wedding plans along with it. When the whirlwind first started, I thought I had nothing to worry about regarding my Lag B’omer wedding, confident that come May, everything would return to normal.

I watched the videos going around of the impromptu backyard weddings with a mixture of awe and pity for the couples who had to give out party favors of hand sanitizers and gloves. But all too soon, I realized that this would probably be a long-term situation, and that I would be lucky to have enough people at my wedding to have to dispense hand sanitizer. (And also, that hand sanitizer was way out of the wedding budget.)