A couple were forced to rearrange their wedding in just 24 HOURS after tough Tier 4 restrictions threatened to ruin their special day.
Mark, 40, and Kimmi Fiander, 38, had planned to get hitched on New Years’ Eve as a means of “ending a terrible year on a high”.
They had already been forced to postpone their plans to get married in New York in September 2019 due to the deadly pandemic.
But after tough new measures were announced on 23 December, plunging the county of Norfolk into strict Tier 4 restrictions from Boxing Day, the couple faced another postponement.
The pair, from Heacham, Norfolk, were forced to forgo a wedding cake and creatively improvised on the bridesmaids dresses as the couple scrabbled around to make sure their big day went ahead.
A distraught Kimmi phoned the vicar who phoned back within an hour saying she could squeeze them in the next day.
They jumped at the chance of walking down the aisle within a matter of hours, despite Kimmi’s wedding dress not arriving until Christmas Eve morning.
Mark and Kimmi, both Howdens Joinery Kitchens workers, then frantically spent the rest of the evening phoning up their 12 guests to tell them of the altered plans before they got hitched at Heacham Church.
Now happily man and wife the couple look forward to spending 2021 planning their honeymoon.
Mark said: “It was a crazy 24 hours.
“But if we hadn’t done it, we’d still not be married now, it had to be Christmas Eve or nothing.
“When the announcement was made The Mrs was pretty upset about it so we had to do something.
“We agreed to the wedding for the next day but Kimmi’s wedding dress hadn’t even arrived
“When the new tier system was announced, we were in Tier 2 things were looking up with the vaccine, so we decided to book a small local on New Years Eve at our village church.
“We had arranged it with our local vicar, Veronica, which would then be followed by a reception at the Rose and Crown.
“But when we finished work on 23rd December we listened to the Tier announcements as everything was changing.
“We were in Tier 2 at the time and we thought we might go to Tier 3 so we could still have the wedding but then they jumped us from Tier 2 to Tier 4.
“I was frustrated when we found out our New Year’s Eve wedding was cancelled again, and Kimmi burst into tears, I was trying to calm her down.
“She was devastated, I kept saying we’ll get married one day, even if it’s next year.
“She was giving up hope a bit that it would ever happen, she was desperate for it to happen before the end of the year.
“Then Kimmi rang the vicar who was due to run our ceremony on New Year’s Eve, and she said ‘I’m already working on it’.
“As soon as she had heard the restrictions announcement she got on the phone to the Bishop trying to work something out.
“She asked us if we could do it tomorrow which would mean we could get married before the restrictions kicked in on Boxing Day.
“We had to apply for our marriage licence via a Zoom call in two hours on 23rd December.
“We had originally planned to have our Banns read out but there wasn’t time before Christmas eve, so we had to apply for a marriage licence over Zoom.
“We had a Christmas themed wedding. Because the two bridesmaids dresses didn’t arrive we dressed them in burgundy ones as it fitted with the theme.
“We couldn’t get a cake done in time and we had to get extra flowers from the florist as we hadn’t finished all that yet.
“We had 15 people all together, me, Kimmi, the vicar Veronica and 12 guests.
“Everything went to plan and we got married at 3pm the next day on Christmas Eve with Christmas themed wedding.”
“It wasn’t what we had planned, but we didn’t have time to even think about that, or feel nervous, and I don’t think it could have gone any better.
“We were a bit stressed the day before, we had a lot of work to do and were running around like headless chickens, but we managed to do it!
“Thanks to Veronica’s help, we ended up managing to do everything we’d originally planned for the 31st, just a hell of a lot quicker.
“It was all worth it, there were some things we couldn’t do, like I didn’t get a stag do or anything, but we were too busy to be nervous and the day went really well.”
