An earthy, awe-in­spir­ing African wed­ding in 2020, with To­ba­go as its venue, was what Ce­leste Au­gus­tine en­vis­aged in mid-2019 when she start­ed plan­ning her big day. For Ash­ley Lewis, it would be the soft, ro­man­tic ever­green set­ting in Shake­speare's A Mid­sum­mer Night's Dream as she too mapped out her 2020 dream in 2019.

Of course, that was be­fore the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic struck. By the time both brides said “I do” to their hus­bands, Ke­ston Lazare and Michael Den­nis re­spec­tive­ly, in 2020, they would have moved around their wed­ding dates a few times. They would have al­so had to change their vi­sions of what one of the most im­por­tant day of their lives should look like.

The cou­ples were fea­tured last year on Trinidad­Wed­dings.com, an es­teemed in­for­ma­tion web­site for brides and wed­ding ser­vices providers de­vel­oped by wed­ding ex­pert Si­mone Sant-Ghu­ran. They be­came part of a lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al trend of mi­cro wed­dings–in­ti­mate wed­dings with few­er than 50 guests–spawned by the pan­dem­ic.

Ash­ley Lewis and Michael Den­nis wed­ding was most like­ly the first “shift wed­ding” in T&T–guests at­tend­ed in batch­es, and there were vir­tu­al plat­forms for view­ing the cer­e­mo­ny and re­cep­tion.

Ce­leste Au­gus­tine and Ke­ston Lazare achieved their unique and vi­brant union by a last-minute in­ter­ven­tion and cel­e­brate their first an­niver­sary to­day.

One year lat­er, both cou­ples shared with Sun­day Guardian, that all the ef­fort and stress of pulling off a pan­dem­ic wed­ding was worth it.

Celeste Augustine and Keston Lazare with their children on the wedding day.

Adriel Salandy

Ce­leste Au­gus­tine and Ke­ston Lazare–Sat­ur­day, Sep­tem­ber 26, 2020

Post­pon­ing the wed­ding in the face of COVID-19 was nev­er an op­tion, Au­gus­tine said. She and her then-fi­ance were build­ing a life to­geth­er–they al­ready had a busi­ness go­ing–and did not want to lose mo­men­tum.

“Whether it was ten peo­ple, five peo­ple or one per­son, I didn't think it made sense post­pon­ing. I want­ed to so­lid­i­fy what we had, con­tin­ue what we had start­ed,” Au­gus­tine said.

Au­gus­tine said she and her fi­ance, Lazare, ini­tial­ly de­cid­ed on a No­vem­ber 15, 2020 wed­ding in To­ba­go which would cater for 70 guests. Her aunt, pop­u­lar songstress Car­ol Ad­di­son, who lives in New York, was card­ed to en­ter­tain as one of the high­lights of her wed­ding.

Au­gus­tine and Lazare end­ed up get­ting mar­ried on Sep­tem­ber 26, 2020, with ten peo­ple present. And that num­ber in­clud­ed the pho­tog­ra­ph­er and oth­er ser­vice staff on hand, as Au­gus­tine was quick to point out. COVID re­stric­tions had pre­vent­ed guests like her aunt and maid of ho­n­our from en­ter­ing the coun­try and had al­so dras­ti­cal­ly re­duced the to­tal num­ber per­mit­ted to at­tend.

For her orig­i­nal African theme, Au­gus­tine had sourced cloth from Ghana for out­fits for her­self and her bridal par­ty. This end­ed up lost in tran­sit. She turned to a lo­cal ven­dor for ex­pen­sive African cloth for her­self and her fi­ance.

“It's still by the tai­lor,” Au­gus­tine said, “some­one sug­gest­ed we could use it for our fifth or tenth an­niver­sary.”

Af­ter the own­er of her first venue can­celled amid a na­tion­wide COVID lock­down, she and Lazare tried to book three oth­er venues when busi­ness­es were grant­ed per­mis­sion to re­open around the end of June 2020. In the un­cer­tain cli­mate of a pan­dem­ic, how­ev­er, venue own­ers were scep­ti­cal about mi­cro wed­dings and hav­ing to put out the same ef­fort to cater for a small­er num­ber of peo­ple, and were un­will­ing to promise event space to those still seek­ing to hold events.

Au­gus­tine said de­spite hav­ing a sup­port­ive fi­ance who was in­volved in every step of plan­ning their wed­ding, by ear­ly Sep­tem­ber, she was burnt out and be­came some­what with­drawn.

The 29-year-old per­son­al as­sis­tant at the Port-of-Spain May­or's Of­fice, said a work col­league, Joanne Fer­gu­son, whom she had al­so known from the Li­on's Club of Ari­ma, had ob­served her un­usu­al­ly qui­et moods, called her out of the blue and sug­gest­ed a small bird sanc­tu­ary venue in Mara­cas Val­ley, St Joseph, called Yer­rette.

“I think it was all God. It was ex­act­ly what we want­ed in terms of the style. It was very earthy and green...ex­act­ly what we had en­vi­sioned and the hum­ming­birds were just the ic­ing on the cake. They were mind-blow­ing. I had nev­er seen any­thing like that. I im­me­di­ate­ly pushed up the date.” Au­gus­tine laughed.

She de­cid­ed to use less­er-known wed­ding ven­dors, span­ning a cake de­sign­er and cater­ers to cloth­ing de­sign­ers and a hair­styl­ist. Every­thing came to­geth­er with­in two weeks, she beamed. Some of their spe­cial touch­es for the wed­ding were a cus­tom-made ring hold­er from a fall­en tree from their yard made by her hus­band at their palette fur­ni­ture busi­ness, Pal­letry TT, a bright yel­low hand-dyed em­pire Caribbean wed­ding dress ac­cen­tu­at­ed with burnt or­ange and cin­na­mon tie-dyed hal­ter straps by Cu­pid De­signs, and Cha­co­nia flow­ers.

They had to ob­serve health pro­to­cols like so­cial dis­tanc­ing and set­ting up a tem­per­a­ture check­point in prepar­ing the venue. While they did not have so­cial me­dia stream­ing plat­forms for fam­i­ly and friends to wit­ness the event, the cou­ple was able to pull off their spe­cial day.

Re­flect­ing on their cur­rent re­la­tion­ship, Au­gus­tine ad­mit­ted that it was a far cry from how they had met.

Hav­ing been in­tro­duced while do­ing work for a mas band five years ago–Au­gus­tine in pub­lic re­la­tions and Lazare in com­put­er graph­ics–she said they of­ten butt heads about ideas for the band. It took some time, but their con­flicts even­tu­al­ly gave way to mu­tu­al ro­man­tic feel­ings.

“He be­came such a strong pos­i­tive in­flu­ence in my life. His ide­olo­gies were so dif­fer­ent from mine that I had to stop and con­sid­er them; be­come more open-mind­ed, ac­com­mo­dat­ing,” she said.

Lazare said al­though they ar­gued a lot in the be­gin­ning, their re­la­tion­ship de­vel­oped through com­mu­ni­ca­tion and lis­ten­ing. They would write let­ters to each oth­er ex­press­ing deep feel­ings, with Lazare of­ten leav­ing Diego Mar­tin to de­liv­er the love notes to her in Ari­ma. They still write to each oth­er, he re­vealed.

“Some­times you want to say what you want to say with­out be­ing in­ter­rupt­ed. She has all the let­ters. I have most of them. It's a lot. You re­al­ly pour your emo­tions in­to it and al­low your­self to be vul­ner­a­ble. It's re­al­ly deep, in­tro­spec­tive of your­self and what the per­son means to you.”

He said their re­la­tion­ship had evolved in­to one of mu­tu­al un­der­stand­ing.

“We don't ar­gue now. We have dis­cus­sions, so even if we don't agree on some­thing, we could reach the point where we say: OK, we're not go­ing to agree, let's move on from this top­ic. There just came a point that I re­alised that this was the woman I want­ed to be with and I did every­thing to en­sure that that hap­pened. She was ex­act­ly what I need­ed in my life and go­ing for­ward too.

“She filled a void. She was some­body I could talk to, some­body who could un­der­stand, some­body who was sup­port­ive.”

He praised his wife for be­ing a very good moth­er to his chil­dren, nine and 11, from a pre­vi­ous re­la­tion­ship, who live with them. She helps to en­sure that their school work is in check, or­gan­is­es fam­i­ly days and has Zoom par­ties with oth­er par­ents and their chil­dren, Lazare said.

Au­gus­tine re­called her hus­band's pro­pos­al as hav­ing been sim­ple, but tru­ly un­for­get­table. Lazare said he bought his wife's en­gage­ment ring on Ju­ly 4, 2019, but de­cid­ed he could not wait. He penned a let­ter and pro­posed while they were in the car at the Grand Bazaar car park that very day.

“He gave me a let­ter that end­ed abrupt­ly and I was like: what go­ing on here? I was about to get an­noyed. Then he just spoke...”

She said to this day, she has lit­tle mem­o­ry of what he said be­cause she was over­whelmed at the time, but he fin­ished it ver­bal­ly, ask­ing her for her hand in mar­riage and pre­sent­ing the ring.

“She al­ways said it was not the Hol­ly­wood pro­pos­al, but she just went blank and start­ed scream­ing and cry­ing,” Lazare laughed.

He said for their first an­niver­sary to­day, he's plan­ning a sur­prise which, of course, he could not re­veal, but which he knows his wife will en­joy.

Ashley Lewis and Michael Dennis listen to a speech at their wedding.

Amber Dawn Photography

Ash­ley Lewis and Michael Den­nis–Sat­ur­day, Oc­to­ber 24, 2020

Lewis, an in­sur­ance un­der­writer, 32, want­ed a church cer­e­mo­ny and a re­cep­tion in an ethe­re­al set­ting, com­plete with soft pinks and flow­ers, with about 150 guests.

Her Ja­maican fi­ance, Den­nis, had moved to Trinidad on Oc­to­ber 24, 2017 and they had be­come en­gaged on Oc­to­ber 24, 2019, so it was no sur­prise that they de­cid­ed to get mar­ried on Oc­to­ber 24. They set­tled on hav­ing their spe­cial day in 2020.

Since Lewis' grand­fa­ther was 93 and was ea­ger for them to get mar­ried as soon as pos­si­ble as he re­al­ly want­ed to be present and did not want them to just set­tle for liv­ing to­geth­er, they moved the date for­ward to Ju­ly 4, 2020. When COVID hit, they tried to change to Oc­to­ber 3 hop­ing that the in­ter­na­tion­al health cri­sis would ease by then.

“We thought maybe this (the pan­dem­ic) would get sort­ed quick­ly and peo­ple would fly in be­cause Michael is from Ja­maica and his whole fam­i­ly is in Ja­maica, but that didn't hap­pen. And then, half of my fam­i­ly live away from Trinidad, half of my bridal par­ty couldn't en­ter the coun­try,” Lewis re­called.

She said 34-year-old Den­nis, who works as a se­nior com­pli­ance ad­min­is­tra­tor, still held out hope for an Oc­to­ber 24 date and they got their wish as their church of choice–Church of the As­sump­tion in Mar­aval–be­came avail­able af­ter an­oth­er cou­ple sud­den­ly can­celled.

Un­de­terred by the pan­dem­ic, they pressed on and end­ed up plan­ning the en­tire wed­ding in less than two months. Lewis got her fairy tale theme, but not with­out much com­pro­mise on oth­er as­pects of the wed­ding.

At the church, they could on­ly have ten peo­ple. Two back-to-back re­cep­tions at her grand­fa­ther's house in Mar­aval fol­lowed; one for clos­est fam­i­ly mem­bers and one for her bridal par­ty and clos­est friends. They were the on­ly guests al­lowed to at­tend. Each re­cep­tion had 20 peo­ple in to­tal, in­clud­ing wed­ding staff in their var­i­ous roles. Sani­ti­sa­tion sta­tions had to be set up and tem­per­a­ture checks tak­en. Lewis re­called jok­ing­ly that her fa­ther had to be plucked from the dance floor to make room for the sec­ond batch of guests.

“There was just about a half an hour in be­tween try­ing to get the first group of peo­ple to leave–like my fa­ther who want­ed to stay and par­ty–to bring in the sec­ond ro­ta­tion of guests. My un­cle had to tell him: we have to go, let the young peo­ple have a time to par­ty too. They were en­joy­ing them­selves so much,” she said.

Lewis said they had just missed out on an in­crease in the num­ber of peo­ple al­lowed at venues which was an­nounced lat­er that day. Though many is­sues sur­round­ing her wed­ding proved to be “bit­ter­sweet” for Lewis, she was grate­ful for the ad­vice of her wed­ding co­or­di­na­tor, Si­mone Sant-Ghu­ran.

She said Sant-Ghu­ran had sug­gest­ed that they set up a live on­line feed which was streamed to fam­i­ly and friends lo­cal­ly and abroad who were not al­lowed to at­tend in per­son. They al­so had zoom calls so peo­ple could in­ter­act vir­tu­al­ly.

“Friends and fam­i­ly even took the time to dress up for our wed­ding. Some peo­ple had food too. They were toast­ing. It was adorable,” Lewis re­called.

“A lot of video­g­ra­phers are us­ing tech­nol­o­gy which may seem pricey, but it was worth it for us to be able to in­clude every­body. Michael's moth­er gave a speech, it was so amaz­ing to have her there (vir­tu­al­ly) to say some­thing to us on our wed­ding day. My maid-of-ho­n­our was in Cana­da, al­so my cousin, and I swear I was break­ing down lis­ten­ing to her speech.”

Un­like Au­gus­tine, how­ev­er, Lewis had had lit­tle trou­ble find­ing a venue. A charm­ing plan­ta­tion-style home, com­plete with lush, scenic grounds, her grand­fa­ther's house was a spe­cial place and a sec­ond home as she was es­pe­cial­ly close to her ma­ter­nal grand­par­ents. Her grand­moth­er who was 90, passed about three years ago.

“It was re­al­ly heart-warm­ing and it felt right to have the re­cep­tion there which is fun­ny be­cause that was the first place I had thought of to be­gin with. I re­mem­ber men­tion­ing it to my moth­er and she was like: no way, and we went look­ing for venues be­fore COVID, and it just came full cir­cle–just like the wed­ding date–back to the house.”

Lewis said grand­fa­ther al­lowed them to emp­ty the en­tire down­stairs part of the house to cre­ate their Mid­sum­mer Night's Dream-meets-Twi­light: Break­ing Dawn Part I-set­ting.

Soft fairytale decor, left and custom-made cake (Cake by Chef Paul, Pastry Class T&T), right, at Ashley Lewis and Michael Dennis wedding.

Amber Dawn Photography

Some unique touch­es in their wed­ding were Den­nis' black mono­chrome leather high top Con­verse sneak­ers (which her moth­er and broth­er ini­tial­ly tried for a year to con­vince him to change), Lewis' bling-on-a-bud­get Bad­g­ley Mis­ch­ka shoes and their rings.

Den­nis said though he was not a fan of jew­el­ry, he want­ed to en­sure that their rings were unique. When he re­alised he would not get his first choice of rings he saw on­line in time, he opt­ed for cus­tom-made lo­cal sil­ver with etch­ings or as he put it: “scratch­es and dents” which rep­re­sent “some­one hav­ing gone through it, but still find­ing beau­ty.”

The cou­ple shared that they first met in Psy­chol­o­gy class in 2010 while do­ing their Bach­e­lor de­grees at UWI's Mona West­ern Ja­maica Cam­pus. Den­nis said he had a sort of pre­mo­ni­tion when he first saw Lewis, that she would be in his life for a long time. Lewis saw him look­ing straight at her while she was talk­ing with their pro­fes­sor and found him to be “ex­treme­ly good look­ing.” But they were both in re­la­tion­ships at the time and it would take a few more years for their ro­mance to take off.

Re­con­nect­ing via Face­book in 2015, their friend­ship grew and when Lewis' moth­er hugged Den­nis when she in­tro­duced them at a su­per­mar­ket while they were vis­it­ing Ja­maica, Lewis said she knew he was the one.

“My moth­er is not a hug­ger. She does not hug strangers and she was like: oh Michael, come let me hug you. I was like: wow.”

Al­though they had al­ready dis­cussed mar­riage and Lewis was an­tic­i­pat­ing a ring, the ac­tu­al pro­pos­al took her by sur­prise. He sent her flow­ers at her new job on the sec­ond-year an­niver­sary of when they had start­ed dat­ing. Lewis who Den­nis de­scribed as “work­ing for the TTPS,” said she be­came sus­pi­cious since send­ing flow­ers was not in his na­ture.

On their way home, he drove past their Diego Mar­tin ex­it and head­ed to Care­nage, telling her they were go­ing to en­joy the sun­set near Pier One. Lewis said it was one of her favourite spots and watch­ing the sun­set over the yachts as they danced on the spark­ly wa­ters was glo­ri­ous, but she was an­tic­i­pat­ing a ring. It was when they got in­to the car that Den­nis caught her off guard.

“I turned around and he was down on one knee next to me in the open car door...Oh My God..with a box in his hand.”

Den­nis said she cried so hard, it took her a while to say “yes” to him.

Lewis and Den­nis are look­ing for­ward to their first an­niver­sary next month. And what have they learnt in their first year of mar­riage? Den­nis said he knew he was com­ing to this coun­try to mar­ry Lewis so he had be­gun con­di­tion­ing him­self for mar­riage in ad­vance.

“A friend told me: when you get mar­ried, you will change, not nec­es­sar­i­ly for bad, but you be­come a dif­fer­ent ver­sion of your­self. You have to stick to your word, stick to the plan and I've found that this is true. Once you en­ter the in­sti­tu­tion of mar­riage, things get dif­fer­ent, but you still have to stay in love, be the hus­band you're sup­posed to be, be the wife you're sup­posed to be.”

Lewis added “...and find ways and rea­sons to fall in love, every day be­cause you mar­ried that per­son for a rea­son. Help each oth­er to evolve and be the best ver­sions of your­self.”

As to hav­ing host­ed their big day dur­ing a pan­dem­ic, the cou­ple was adamant that they had no re­grets.

“We beat COVID-19!” Den­nis de­clared tri­umphant­ly. “Yeah, we still got mar­ried!” his wife chimed in.

Founder and Editor of Trinidad Weddings, Simone Sant-Ghuran.

'Wed­ding in­dus­try may take two years to re­bound from pan­dem­ic'

Small­er, more unique wed­dings will be a sta­ple of the fu­ture, Founder and Ed­i­tor of Trinidad Wed­dings.com, Si­mone Sant-Ghu­ran be­lieves.

In a re­cent in­ter­view with Sun­day Guardian, Sant-Ghu­ran said the pan­dem­ic had “heav­i­ly” im­pact­ed the wed­ding and event in­dus­try and would lead to small­er lo­cal wed­dings or a rise in des­ti­na­tion wed­dings, as well as high­er costs.

She said cou­ples who had had wed­dings dur­ing COVID had a most­ly “bare-bones” guest list and had en­list­ed very few wed­ding ven­dor part­ners or sup­pli­ers, to the detri­ment of the in­dus­try.

“We pre­dict that the ma­jor­i­ty of wed­dings in­to 2022 will con­tin­ue to be small­er scale. Based on in­for­ma­tion from our data­base at Trinidad­Wed­dings.com, the av­er­age T&T wed­ding stayed steady at around 200-250 guests for many years,” Sant-Ghu­ran said.

“Al­though there will be lav­ish, large wed­dings when re­stric­tions ease, we be­lieve those will be in the mi­nor­i­ty, as most cou­ples will opt for an av­er­age of 50 guests (and un­der) or de­cide on elope­ments or des­ti­na­tion wed­dings out­side of Trinidad and To­ba­go, to lo­ca­tions with few­er re­stric­tions or where COVID-19 is un­der con­trol.”

With much of the spe­cialised tal­ent leav­ing the in­dus­try and piv­ot­ing to oth­er ar­eas like food and bev­er­age, beau­ty prod­ucts and re­al es­tate, Sant-Ghu­ran pre­dict­ed that it would take at least two years for the wed­ding in­dus­try to see signs of re­cov­ery.

“...but I am hope­ful that it could be short­er if im­mu­ni­sa­tions are sought and Gov­ern­ment grants are able to be ac­cessed. How­ev­er, even with those two fac­tors, the foun­da­tion of what will help us re­cov­er is “con­sumer con­fi­dence” in events–when peo­ple have a stronger “peace of mind” that they can cel­e­brate safe­ly,” she said.

Sant-Ghu­ran al­so fore­sees more de­tailed wed­ding con­tracts to pro­tect the ven­dor and the cou­ple. She said there would have to be pro­vi­sions for post­pone­ments and resched­ul­ing fees.

She said the “force ma­jeure” (su­pe­ri­or force) clause in the con­tracts of event and wed­ding plan­ners must al­so cater for even­tu­al­i­ties as­so­ci­at­ed with COVID-19. This clause frees both par­ties sign­ing a con­tract from li­a­bil­i­ty if an in­ci­dent or cir­cum­stances be­yond their con­trol de­vel­ops.

“Cou­ples may now even be asked to sign a 'Du­ty of Care' doc­u­ment by their venues, so that they and their guests don’t hold the venue ac­count­able for any­one who might con­tract COVID-19, post-wed­ding,” she said.

She urged that the in­dus­try learn to live with and mit­i­gate the as­so­ci­at­ed risks for cou­ples, guests and ven­dors, de­spite the fall­out brought by COVID-19.

To keep up to date on wed­ding trends, join Trinidad Wed­dings' mail­ing list on:https://www.trinidad­wed­dings.com/mail­ing-list/