The newlyweds should be spending this week in Islamorada, enjoying a sun-splashed honeymoon in the Florida Keys and reveling in freshly made memories of their seaside wedding at Holy Cross Catholic Church and waterfront reception at Quail Valley’s River Club.
But an uninvited guest named Matthew showed up in Vero Beach at the worst possible time and ruined everything.
“We planned this for a year,” said Natalie Collins, a barrier island native who grew up in Castaway Cove, where her parents still reside. “I loved the idea of getting married in October, because it’s such a pretty month and we wanted our friends from out of town to enjoy what Vero has to offer and see how beautiful it is.
“We never thought about a hurricane.”
Collins and her fiancée, Scott Myers, never imagined they’d be forced to postpone their wedding because a massive hurricane – the first such storm to blow through this area in 11 years – would prompt a mandatory island evacuation, close major airports, create hazardous travel conditions and cause power outages throughout the community.
Even as the bride-to-be and her betrothed left their home in Wilmington, N.C., early last week and drove to Vero Beach for a full slate of wedding festivities, they fully expected to be married Saturday afternoon.
They closely monitored Hurricane Matthew and the daily predictions for its future path and were optimistic about the early forecasts, even when the weather experts said the storm was headed our way.
They accepted they’d probably need to scrub Thursday evening’s meet-and-greet social gathering at Orchid Island Brewery, where early-arriving guests could get to know each other. But they clung to hopes that Friday’s bridal luncheon at the Ocean Grill, wedding rehearsal at Holy Cross and rehearsal dinner at Riomar Country Club were still possible.
The couple, engaged for nearly a year, refused to believe all the planning and preparation for their wedding day would be washed away.
“At first, it looked like the storm was going to pass by us on Thursday and we’d be OK for the weekend,” Collins said. “Then the forecast changed.”
With Matthew bearing down on Florida’s Treasure Coast and expected to hit – or at least graze – Vero Beach as a Category 4 hurricane, Collins and Myers were confronted by a painful reality.
“I woke up Wednesday morning and saw the track, and it looked like more of a direct hit,” Collins said. “That’s when I knew the wedding wasn’t going to happen.”
The final decision was made over lunch. Collins and Myers picked up hamburgers from Casey’s Place and brought them back to her parents’ home, where they held a family meeting. The four discussed the situation and the possible options, then Collins’ mother and father left the room so the couple could decide.
“People from out of town were getting ready to make the trip, so a decision had to be made,” Collins’ mom said. “We talked about the guests coming to town, their safety and what happens if we lose power at the hotels, at the church and at Quail Valley. Most of the out-of-town guests were staying either on the beach or at Quail.
“Then we started hearing from the band, the photographer, the florist, the hairdressers, the nail techs, the makeup artists,” she continued.
“We had been in communication with people all week,” she added. “I couldn’t go 10 minutes without the phone ringing. Everyone wanted to know if the wedding was still on.”
Collins and Myers decided it wasn’t.
“We really didn’t have a choice,” Collins said. “It was a heart-breaking decision to make, but there was no way we could do it.” It proved to be the right call: Though the hurricane didn’t do as much damage as feared and Saturday brought sunny skies, Matthew wreaked havoc on travel.
The storm made it impossible to have the wedding celebration the couple wanted and planned for. In fact, after arriving in Vero Beach in the wee hours of Wednesday morning, Collins and Myers left town Wednesday night and drove back to Wilmington – where the hurricane continued its trek along the southeast coast of the U.S.
“Is this weekend ever going to end?” an exasperated Collins said Sunday, when she called her mom to report only tree damage and a power outage at the couple’s North Carolina home.
According to her mom, Collins looked at a clock at 3 p.m. Saturday – when her wedding was scheduled to start – and began crying. “She was very emotional,” her mom said of her daughter, who turns 27 next week.
This week, though, Collins and her mom will begin planning again. They’d like to reschedule the wedding for March or April in the same church with the reception at Quail Valley, as before, but they need to check the availability of both venues before setting a date.
Collins’ mom said Quail Valley’s management – she and her husband are club members – has been “extremely accommodating,” and that the other vendors have been “nice and understanding.”
“We already have deposits down with everybody,” Collins said. “We just have to find a date that works for everyone.”
Then new invitations will be printed and mailed.
For those who don’t know: Collins’ dad is a former John’s Island tennis director who owns the Tom Collins Insurance Agency.
Collins’ dad said he and his wife offered their daughter and her fiancée the option of getting married now – in a small ceremony – and returning to Vero Beach in a few months for a reception-type party.
Despite last weekend’s disappointment, Collins, who attended East Carolina University on a tennis scholarship and graduated in 2012 with a degree in merchandising, still wanted a traditional wedding. That’s what she’ll get.
“The Collins family has been through five deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait,” Collins’ dad said, referring to the combat service of his son, David, a West Point graduate who left the Army as a captain last year. “We’ll get through this.
“It’s a shame the wedding had to be postponed,” he added, “but in the grand scheme of things, this is fixable.”
At some time in the next six months, the newlyweds should be spending a week in Islamorada, enjoying a sun-splashed honeymoon in the Florida Keys and reveling in freshly made memories of their seaside wedding and waterfront reception.
And we can only hope that when they share their memorable wedding story with others, they’ll be able to do so with a laugh.
