Couple Weds In Ocean City After COVID Delays Destination Wedding

OCEAN CITY, NJ — Jessica and David Meshel always imagined having a beach wedding.

The Burlington couple planned to get married in Jamaica surrounded by 50 family members in May 2020, until the pandemic hit two months before the wedding.

After postponing their wedding three times over the past year, Jessica and David decided to get married on 17th Street Beach in Ocean City on May 17.

“I’m one of many COVID brides that had to figure out what they were going to do,” said Jessica Meshel. “When the pandemic hit, we obviously had to cancel that because we weren’t even allowed to leave the country."

The couple decided to postpone their wedding from May 2020 to November. As the pandemic continued, they pushed it again to May of this year.

They were still hoping to board the plane to Jamaica in May up until New Year’s Day.

With COVID-19 vaccines just beginning to roll out in December, the couple canceled the wedding out of concern for their older family and friends.

“I had heard horror stories that people tested positive and weren’t able to get back home. We didn’t feel like putting any of our family or friends through that,” she said.

Instead of postponing their wedding for a fourth time, they decided to plan a wedding in Ocean City.

“How many times are we going to tell people we’re postponing? Let’s just get married. We tried three times to do a Jamaica wedding. Let’s just do something local,” she said. “I grew up going to Ocean City as a kid and then I took my fiancé on our family vacations when we started dating.”

If the wedding went on as scheduled in Jamaica, Meshel said the resort would have handled the wedding planning for them.

With their new plan to get married in Ocean City, Meshel took the reins and organized a wedding for 50 guests, including the photography, reception and favors, which came from Johnson’s Popcorn on the Boardwalk.

Meshel rented a beach house on 17th Street so her family could have a place nearby to get ready, which is how the couple ended up saying "I do" on the beach there.

"We were kind of on our own private beach. It wasn't even crowded," Meshel said. “It was still the beach and it was beautiful. I still got my beach wedding."

The couple was able to travel to Jamaica for their honeymoon later that week.

"It would have been nice to have our family there to celebrate the wedding, but we were happy with our local wedding," she said. "After all that, we just really wanted that vacation."

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