unveiled
FAMILY
Left, Aliza Chase and Akiva Schick’s wedding on Oct. 25, 2020; top right, Ellie and Justin Hod’s wedding on Aug. 16, 2020; above, Julie and Yari Garner’s wedding on May 30, 2021
Three Weddings and a Pandemic How one family safely managed three weddings in the midst of a global pandemic
“Two hours before, we were like, ‘We can’t board this flight.’ They were making New York sound like it had a fungus growing wild. … So we canceled our plans,” Leslie Chase recalls. “We thought, OK, we’ll board a plane next week, everything will be fine.” For the Chase family, that canceled flight in March 2020 marked the first in a series of wedding-related pivots. Over the last year, couples across the world have changed their dates, revamped guest lists and added hand sanitizer to goodie bags. But few can share the experience of watching the pandemic’s domino effect touch three sisters’ weddings in a 12-month span. So while experts began urging people to pick up stress-relieving hobbies last spring—puzzles, bird-watching, breadmaking—Chase family matriarch Leslie instead helped orchestrate and anchor weddings for her three daughters, Aliza, Ellie and Julie. That’s an unusually stressful 20
COLUMBUS WEDDINGS FALL/WINTER 2021
situation in a normal year, but never underestimate the resoluteness of a determined mother, even in a pandemic. “Being able to manage a pandemic and weddings and working,”—Leslie is a child, adolescent and adult psychiatrist at Hopewell Health Center in Athens—“she deserves a round of applause for that,” says the family’s wedding planner, Courtney Heibel of Rooted Together. At this point, Heibel says she teases Leslie that she has the experience and skill to switch professions entirely and work with her as a wedding planner. While the Chase sisters’ weddings will always be about each couple, it’s hard to understate the roles Leslie and Heibel played in ensuring each daughter could wax poetic about her day without focusing on the pandemic. Each daughter and her partner instead thrills in the memories of their experience, rather than bemoaning what could have been.
PHOTOS: LEFT, DERK’S WORKS PHOTOGRAPHY; RIGHT, LAUREN LEE PHOTOGRAPHY (2)
BY SARAH STEIMER
