It's a year since Boris Johnson told the country to Stay At Home and the Mirror has spoken to a dozen people about the impact the lockdowns have had on their lives. Zoe Davies, 37, was due to marry fellow hospital doctor Tom Jackson, 35, on April 4, 2020.
They tried to bring the date forward – then weddings were banned. Finally, after a surprise Zoom blessing organised by family, the determined pair managed to tie the knot in August, on their third attempt...
The past 12 months have been eventful. It’s been a very busy year but we managed to get married in the end, after having several goes…
We were meant to get married on April 4. We met in 2016 and got engaged in August 2019 and always planned to have quite a big wedding.
In February 2020, going into March, it seemed like everything changed every day. There was one plan then another. It started with ‘wash your hands’ then every day things got worse.
Just weeks before, we still hoped the wedding would happen – we were a bit in denial – but then we started to realise various people wouldn’t be able to come. I had relatives in Italy and they were locked down earlier than we were.
It became clear that we weren’t going to be able to have the wedding we’d planned but because we’re both doctors, working in hospitals going into a pandemic, we really wanted to still get married.
We tried really hard to make it happen. We contacted my parish and got a second, special licence from the Bishop of Leeds and arranged to get married the next day, the Tuesday, in my village church.
Then Boris announced the national lockdown on the Monday and said that weddings could no longer go ahead and we were cancelled again.
At this point we thought we’d just have to say our vows to each other and give each other rings at another point. It was pretty upsetting.
My dad was ill and I was helping to care for him. Tom and I were apart for a couple of months – I was in the North of England and he was in London. It was a very difficult time for us.
Then on April 4, what would have been our wedding day, Tom’s brother, Will, the best man, arranged a family Zoom call.
Tom and I were still separated but we thought we’d get dressed up in some of our wedding gear. Tom wore his suit and I had my wrap on and we decided to have some champagne.
When we logged in, there were 80 people on the call! We were shocked and confused for a moment – we were still Zoom novices really.
Will had arranged it all. It was incredible, so emotional.
Tom and I met singing in a choir and they were there and performed a song they’d recorded for us. Another friend wrote and read a poem, and Tom’s dad, who is a vicar, gave us a blessing.
To be able to do something on that day, when we’d been so disappointed, was amazing.
Tom was in London in a one-bed flat, working shifts, with me 300 miles away.
Yet suddenly it was like he was with me, and all our family and friends. He told me afterwards that it felt really special making that commitment in front of everyone.
In the summer, when weddings were allowed, we went back to the Bishop of Leeds to plan a real wedding again.
Our licence had expired so we had to get another – by this point our third!
We had a ceremony on August 8, just 10 of us in the village where I grew up in North Yorkshire.
We were so lucky. It was that period where you could actually go to bars and the weather was beautiful.
Everyone in the village was really lovely about organising it.
Mum’s friends cleaned and dressed the church, collected flowers for confetti and stood at a distance to cheer us when we came out.
There’s a village tradition where they tie up the gates from the churchyard to the village green with ribbon and the bride and groom cut it so we did that too.
People were driving past beeping. It was the only wedding they had seen for months. At the hotel people gave us a standing ovation.
It was amazing and there was a lot less pressure because it was small, private and personal.
We’re still planning to have a party. As Tom says, we’ve got more time now to save up for booze and for a honeymoon!
Also, we’ve got a lot of annual leave because we’ve been working. It would be great to be able to get away somewhere maybe this summer, June or July.
The realisation that we weren’t going to be seeing our families for our first Christmas together as a married couple was really hard.
The second Covid-19 wave hit London early, in December, and we had to re-do our rotas and tell people they’d be working extra over Christmas.
The second wave has been more stressful. In the first wave, there was a feeling that this was unprecedented and a huge wave of support from the public.
There were amazing volunteers and huge camaraderie among all our teams.
That’s continued but everyone is so exhausted and it’s harder.
In the first peak Tom saw a massive drop in footfall, fewer people coming in with broken limbs because people were staying at home.
In the second wave on the first day there were 35 people who had broken their ankles or wrists – three times as many as normal.
People tell you they weren’t obeying the guidelines. You treat them anyway but it’s frustrating that they’re putting more weight on the system.
We both got our first doses of the vaccine before Christmas. We’d been looking forward to the vaccine for so long. Seeing the rollout in the NHS has given us great hope.
Even if it just reduces the severity of infections, cuts hospital admissions and deaths, it’s a massive thing. If lockdown has taught us one thing, it’s that family is what matters most.
