By: Paige Riding, Humour Editor
SURREY, BC — After moving out from the rock they were living under, a couple is devastated to learn that a pandemic would be preventing them from hosting their planned 500-person wedding this fall.
In a Zoom interview with The Peak, partners Lisa Valice and Samuel Collier explained how devastating this news was for their relationship.
“I don’t think people understand how much we were putting into this wedding,” began Lisa. “Being legally tied together really means so much to us. It’s—”
“It’s everything,” Samuel piped in, causing Lisa to glare out the side of her eye at him.
“Yeah, that’s exactly what I was just about to say. Anyway, I was going to have my third cousins living in Peru come and visit for the wedding. I haven’t met them, if you can believe that.” She then continued to list the distant relatives and friends from middle school she had on the list on her phone, pausing every once in a while as she tried putting faces to names. Her repeated failure to do so resulted in shrugs and sighs about “if she could just see them in person, the memories would come flooding back.”
Samuel spoke up. “We were really holding out for this moment. Despite our bickering, despite our screaming at each other, despite that one time I accidentally locked my fiancée out of the house after she went to get the newspaper and told me she’d be right back and saying to ‘not lock this fucking door I swear to God I will break your kneecaps,’ despite me absolutely despising her mother, despite her hating all of my friends with a burning passion, despite—”
“Despite all that,” Lisa cut in, veins popping out on her neck in a gracious act of self-restraint, “we thought this wedding would remind us why we started going out in the first place all those months ago.”
The two started dating after Samuel watched Lisa trip up the Saywell stairs back in February and laughed instead of helping her when her elbow split open and blood got everywhere.
Samuel then noted that they planned to book the same place where a Spirit Halloween is currently set up in Surrey, but were shocked to find out they were not allowed.
“At first we thought it was because it would take a while for them to move out the $600 anamatronics from It and Trick ’r Treat — I’d be scared to move those too — but apparently the pandemic ‘doesn’t allow large gatherings.’ Sounds kinda stupid to me; I see huge parties in my . . . our neighbourhood, Guildford, all the time,” he noted with a frown.
When asked if they would have an intimate wedding, perhaps with some close friends and family, Lisa immediately shook her head fervently.
“No. No, we can’t do that. For one, the thought of Samuel inviting his best friend Jarin — ugh, what a name. God, I hate that guy — and me not having a 300-person buffer between him and me is unthinkable. Two, I need this moment to be big. Spectacular. The cake, my dress, the decorations . . . If it isn’t grand, it won’t do its job of bringing our families together.”
At this point, Samuel had zoned out and was scrolling through Instagram. We could see him liking other women’s posts through the reflection in his glasses. Lisa turned to him to grab his leg in support, noticed what he was doing, and turned back to the monitor like a robot about to self-destruct. It appeared she was not the only thing about to self-destruct.
“Anyway, we’re done.”
Samuel looked up, blinking a couple times in confusion. “What?”
“. . . The interview. We’re done here.”
