Ayana Coston and Clinton Jordan Jr., friends for 17 years who began dating about 18 months ago, had set a wedding date for May 23 with a guest list that kept growing.
“We were looking at about 300 guests from my side of the family alone,” said Mr. Jordan, 46, a network engineer at Lockheed Martin in Herndon, Va., who graduated from Alabama State University and grew up in Loachapoka, Ala. (He also served in the Army as a combat engineer from 1993-96 and was a member of the National Guard from 1996-2001.)
Ms. Coston, 39, an executive coach and consultant based in Reston, Va., where the couple live, figured that she would add “somewhere between 150-200 invites of my own,” creating a situation that she called “our first holy-cow-wedding-planning moment.”
“I was like, ‘OK, we’ll deal with this,” said Ms. Coston, who grew up in Philadelphia, graduated from Temple and received a master’s degree in organizational development at American University.
The coronavirus outbreak eliminated their need for a guest list.
The couple, who met in 2003 through mutual friends when they both worked for Lockheed Martin in Gaithersburg, Md., regrouped with their families, including Ms. Coston’s mother, Pepper Bates, and Mr. Jordan’s parents, Romelia Jordan and Clinton Jordan Sr.
“We came away with a plan for having, as soon as possible, a small, legal wedding,” Ms. Coston said, “and somewhere down the line, when this virus thing is gone, having as big a wedding reception as we could possibly have.”
They were married April 18 at Ciao Bella Celebrations, a private wedding chapel, about 45 minutes from the couple’s home.
Their ceremony, officiated by Dan McLinden, a marriage celebrant authorized by Virginia, included more dedicated songs (seven) than wedding guests (three).
“I’ve been waiting a long time to marry this beautiful woman,” Mr. Jordan said. “Despite the fact that we didn’t get the opportunity to do it in front of our loved ones, it was still very much worth the wait.”