Border closure doesn’t stop wedding

COVID 19 put a crimp in plans by Lindsay Clowes and Alex Leckie for an August wedding in Nova Scotia. With restrictions on the border, her family and friends from Maine could not attend. They thought of putting it off for a year but decided they did not want to wait and would figure out some way to bring people living across the border as close as they could.
About 32 people, St. Stephen Mayor Allan MacEachern among them, all properly socially distanced, gathered on the St. Stephen public wharf on October 10 when Mark Allen Groleau officiated at the ceremony to unite the couple, both 29 years old.
Step grandparents Louis and Marilyn Bernardini from Calais, whose son Christopher is married to mother of the bride Leslie, and other family members watched from a boat about 10 metres out in the St. Croix River. Another 20 or so people watched from the Calais wharf directly opposite the St. Stephen wharf.
Chris Bernardini has lived his entire life in Calais, but both he and Leslie hold Canadian citizenship, so they came over on September 25 and quarantined at a friend's cottage for two weeks, allowing them to join the crowd on the St. Stephen wharf. "It was a perfect day. The only thing that we could have asked for more would have been to have the rest of the family that was in the U.S. with us in St. Stephen," Chris Bernardini says.
The newlyweds went home to Brooklyn, N.S. "They knew they couldn't go anywhere due to COVID-19," Bernardini explains. Alex works for the Nova Scotia Department of Finance, while Lindsay manages an online market.
Lindsay has roots on both sides of the Canada U.S. border. She spent her younger years in Montreal and Fredericton but moved to Calais at age nine, when her mother Leslie married Chris Bernardini. However, she went to school in St. Stephen so she could continue French immersion. Bernardini has ties on both sides, too -- his mother was a McShane from Rollingdam. Leslie lives in Calais but worked at the Royal Bank in St. Stephen.
When they first realized they could not have their wedding in Nova Scotia with American friends and family there, they thought of postponing the event to next July but decided against the idea. "We want to get married, we want to get on with our lives, and we want to try and include as much family as we can; so her idea was to have the wedding on the wharf in St. Stephen because we have a wharf in Calais as well," Bernardini says, explaining the couple's reasoning.
The Bernardinis have a younger daughter, Chloe. "I told Chloe for years, there's always a work around, you just have to find it. Lindsay learned that as well," he says. So, Lindsay's father Rodney Clowes from Beaverdam in the Fredericton area gave his daughter away on the St. Stephen wharf while others witnessed the event from both sides of and on the St. Croix River.
Following the official ceremonies, the group on the St. Stephen wharf crossed the street for a meal and reception at the Five Kings Restaurant. They reserved the entire restaurant because COVID 19 rules allow seating for only 32 people, Bernardini explains.