NEW YORK - "Wicked" star and Broadway actress Amanda Jane Cooper and her fiancé Andrew Bell had been planning a wedding for this spring, but because of the coronavirus outbreak, they opted for a virtual ceremony via Zoom instead.
"Deciding to get married online was definitely an adventure and we could not have done it alone,” said Cooper. “We are super blessed. We have some of our best friends [who] actually live in this building. They were able to be up there manning the technology, so we're so grateful. One of them had an iPad, the other had a laptop. We had two Bluetooth speakers with two hotspots. It was crazy.”
The ceremony was remotely directed by their wedding planner Alice Issac. Both Amanda and Andrew credit her with helping them pull off and capture their special day.
"Our wedding coordinator actually had this idea of having our photographer shoot our wedding through Zoom. We proposed the idea to Alli Nurthen of ALN images; she was totally on board. So we're super grateful for that," Cooper said.
The couple said they had over one hundred virtual guests attend their wedding.
"It was really amazing,” said Bell. “And there was one special moment at the very end that, you know, you just don't think through these things when you plan a normal wedding. But with the help of Alice the wedding planner, she unmuted all the lines right when they declared us husband and wife, and so we got to hear all these yells from, you know, a hundred plus folks cheering us on from wherever they were.”
Wedding planner Jason Mitchell Kahn has years of experience helping Broadway stars coordinate their weddings. Recently, he too has been working on virtual ceremonies.
"The rule that applies to virtual weddings applies to all weddings: You need to determine what your expectations are as a couple getting married and communicate them to your guests. Because if you think you're unsure of what goes into a virtual wedding, trust me, your guests are as well. Just because it's happening on Zoom, it doesn't mean that you shouldn't savor all of the beautiful and personal details that go into making a successful day," said Kahn.
"My dad and my mom were watching from Pennsylvania and I said, 'Hey, dad, would you walk me down the aisle still?' So I was walking with the bouquet in the right hand and my phone in my left hand, and my dad was on the other end and he got to really be with me in that moment. It was beautiful and I'm so grateful that, you know, despite everything that we still were able to share that," Cooper concluded on a tearful but happy note.