“Flights are expensive right now, but when we heard the closure got extended to July, we decided to spend the money on a ticket for L.P. to visit because we couldn’t hold out much longer,” said Ms. Pales, 37, who met Mr. Morand, 36, who she calls L.P., last year on a business trip to Montreal. They work in different cities for the same company, PPG Architectural Coatings. “We hadn’t seen each other for 107 days.”
Their visit in June, though, has not untangled the knottier issue of how they can move forward with their plan to combine their families, and their lives, in Montreal. “We’ll be a blended family of six,” Ms. Pales said; both have two children from previous marriages. In March, days before the first of the pandemic-related shutdowns, they bought a house together in Montreal. Now Ms. Pales and her children are back home in Pittsburgh, their lives on hold. “For the first couple of months, we thought the closure would be short. Now it feels like there’s no end in sight. It’s been devastating.”
They are not without hope. Whether the border reopens on July 21 or not, they plan to be married July 25. “I’m going to pack up my two kids and my dog and drive up with all my documents,” including their banns Quebec’s required public announcement of an impending marriage. “If I’m turned away at the border, we’ll find a way to get him here and get married in Pennsylvania.”
Peter Matta of Milton, Ontario, and his fiancée, Maryann Bishay of Troy, Mich., do not have a Plan B if their Nov. 1 wedding in Troy falls through, which he worries is increasingly likely.
“At this rate, with the extensions, I’m concerned the border still won’t be open,” Mr. Matta said. “We’re hoping for it, and also hoping we can reunite beforehand, since getting married without having seen each other for eight months is a terrible thought.”