After coronavirus canceled their wedding plans, this couple turned to Airbnb and Facebook Live

Katie Santry joined The Final Round to discuss how she and her fiancé planning a socially distanced wedding after their original plans were canceled 12 days before the big day.

Video Transcript

JEN ROGERS: I mean, you're not alone. Look, a survey came out this spring. 470 couples-- The Knot did this-- 96% of couples said they were rescheduling their weddings. But that means that 4% of couples aren't waiting. They're just going ahead. And here, with what it takes to pull off a wedding, is a bride who did just that during shelter in place. I want to bring in Katie Santry Hansen. That's her married name. She's working on getting it changed, but no place is open to go work on doing that.

KATIE SANTRY HANSEN: Right.

JEN ROGERS: Katie, you got married at the end of March, March 28. And you told me that you cried the whole day when your wedding got canceled. But you decided to actually move ahead, and you did have a wedding.

KATIE SANTRY HANSEN: Yes.

JEN ROGERS: Tell us what you did. You got a 300-person wedding. They canceled it. What did you do?

KATIE SANTRY HANSEN: Yes, so our wedding got canceled 12 days before. Once our venue and the shelter in place and limitations were put on people being allowed to gather. So we made a plan B, and then we made plan C. And then by the time we got to plan D, I had found an Airbnb here in Columbus. Our wedding was supposed to be in Kansas, but we live here in Columbus, Ohio. So I found an Airbnb.

And after explaining the situation to them, he gave me a discounted rate. And it was this beautiful loft downtown, and it had this really pretty brick wall. So I went to Walmart, and I got, like, 50 fake LED candles. I got boxes and boxes of fake rose petals to make myself an aisle. Because we were determined to keep our date. Like, coronavirus affected us in so many different ways, with our personal life and our business, and the date was the only thing I felt like we had left. So it was really important to us to put our dress and our suit on and still take that day to be our day.

- And Katie, Melody here. When you think about the original guest list that you had and all of your bridesmaids and groomsmen, and I don't know if you were able to get in a bachelorette party, all of those other kinds of milestones leading up to the wedding, were you planning to reschedule those / are those things kind of canceled entirely? How are you thinking about everything that, you know, in addition to the wedding day itself?

KATIE SANTRY HANSEN: Well, luckily, we have the best friends. And all of our friends put on their bridesmaids dresses and the groomsmen suits, and we Zoomed with them before the wedding. And both my parents were able to drive in. So they FaceTimed my siblings. I had a bachelorette party a few months back, so I did get to have that. And we would like to still have a reception.

We have a wedding video that we got made, that's a few minutes long. So we wanted to have a wedding reception that could play that. And then we are hoping to still have that father-daughter dance and be announced in for the first time as Mr. and Mrs. Hansen, all the things that we didn't get to do. But we're just really glad that we were still able to get married when we wanted to.

JEN ROGERS: So Katie, you said that the groomsmen got dressed, but you also told me that they were wearing their underwear, and they actually didn't put on their pants, because it was a Zoom. So nobody cares.

KATIE SANTRY HANSEN: Right. They were required to put pants on. So they had their suit jackets on, and the girls had done their hair. I mean, because they had dresses. They didn't have a choice. But the guys sat there. And my husband's over there Facetiming them now, bragging about it. But yeah, there was boxers and blazers.

JEN ROGERS: And you got all of your money back. You're a vendor. So you have that. You know, one thing is, when you get married, you barely get to talk to the person you're marrying. You don't get to eat any of the food. It's a really crazy night. Yours was different. In the end, was it special?

KATIE SANTRY HANSEN: Yes. And that was Alek's biggest fear, was when we were looking at still getting married, and we were talking about doing it in our backyard or where we were going to do it, his whole thing was he still wanted it to be special. And after talking to my mom, and she kind of reiterated to us that the day is special, because him and I got married. We'd been together for seven years, and we were really excited about our venue. And so we were engaged for almost two years to get into our venue. But that's OK. We just really wanted to get married, so--

And the nice thing is, after my friend had mentioned that to me, she had a really big wedding. And she was like, I don't even remember talking to my husband the entire night. And we were able to dance, and we had chicken wings, and got pretty drunk. And it was great.

JEN ROGERS: Well, congratulations on pulling it off. Hope you get your big party eventually. Katie Santry, again, a quarantine bride, and now she's on her quarantine honeymoon.

KATIE SANTRY HANSEN: Yes.

JEN ROGERS: Well, great to get a chance to talk with you. Thanks so much.

KATIE SANTRY: Thanks.