This Charleston elopement is becoming a familiar story. In the beginning, Hope and Tucker had plans for a big April wedding in their home state of Colorado with all their family and friends. Tucker is in the Navy, and they had been living in Charleston for the past year. When the country locked down at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, Hope and Tucker realized they would not be able to get back to Colorado for their April 25th date. So they were forced in late March to cancel their mountain wedding, after six months of planning.
Shortly after that, Tucker left for 11 weeks of training in Connecticut while Hope stayed behind in Charleston. When he returned in July, they were set to move to Virginia with the Navy. Everything kept happening so fast, with Navy life and the pandemic making most things out of their control. Hope and Tucker were heartbroken about not being able to have their wedding, and realized that if they wanted to get married at all, they had a very narrow window in which to do it. So they planned a Charleston beach wedding where they’d have their families and their entire wedding party fly out to be there. But because of flight restrictions in the pandemic, that plan was canceled as well.
“Feeling helpless, we found the true value of our wedding, and we just wanted to be together,” Hope said. Tucker flew in to Charleston from Connecticut at 1 am July 3, and they were married 15 hours later. Their parents and brothers were the only guests for their Charleston elopement on the USS Yorktown at Patriot’s Point. The next morning, on July 4, the newlyweds moved to Virginia.
“It was never what I had imagined for my wedding day, and it was a totally different mix of emotions,” Hope said. “We are still sad we weren’t able to be around more of our friends and family and that it wasn’t what we had originally planned, but that’s why it made us that much more grateful. Everything happens for a reason, and I think we made the absolute best out of a bad situation. It made us focus more on what we wanted and what marriage and a wedding truly meant to us.”
Hope and Tucker plan to have a one-year vow renewal and party next year, so their friends and more of their family members can be there.