Love Is Not Cancelled | Congrats to Giveaway Winner, Emily Talbot!

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Azazie held a special Social Media Giveaway as a way to bring some happiness to 5 deserving brides-to-be!

Meet our second Giveaway winner, Emily Talbot!

Spencer and I met when we were 18 years old in the dorms our freshman year of college. He lived across the hall (literally!!). On the first day of school, not knowing anyone on campus, I walked across the hall of our dorm and knocked on Spencers door and asked a complete stranger to have dinner with me so that I didn’t have to eat alone. We became best friends after that and started dating the following summer (June 2014).

We dated through all of college and had a lot of adventures.  After graduation I was moving to California to pursue a masters degree in education (I am a school psychologist). Spencer followed me down to California and got a job in San Francisco. We did long distance (I was about a 3 hour drive away) while I was in grad school.

On December 1, 2018 Spencer proposed while we were on a trip to South Lake Tahoe. He got down on one knee and asked me to marry him under snow covered trees. It was the perfect proposal.

We were engaged and long distance until Summer of 2019. For my final year of grad school I started a full time internship to complete accreditation hours. I got a job in San Francisco Unified School District, and moved to the city to live with my fiancé.

We started planning for our wedding as soon as we got engaged. We were so excited for this next step in our relationship. We decided to get married in June 2020, since I would graduate from grad school in May 2020, and our 6 year anniversary was in June 2020.  It would be a year and a half long engagement. But since getting engaged, we’ve had a lot of life-changing events occur that have really tested our relationship.

In the year and a half that we’d been engaged, I got in a major car accident, my grandfather (who I lived with during my time in grad school) was diagnosed with dementia and his memory is worse with every passing day, my grandmother (who I also lived with during my time in grad school) got pneumonia and was on a ventilator for several weeks, and my oldest cousin (who was like a brother to me) died at the age of 30 due to an unknown medical condition. Our wedding not only was going to be a big step in Spencer and my relationship, but a time for my family to celebrate something good.  With the news of coronavirus, all of the celebrations leading up to the wedding have been cancelled. My graduation ceremony from graduate school has been cancelled. We’ve had to postpone our wedding day over a year later because it was the first day our venue had available. Through all the loss we’ve experienced in the last year and a half, having to postpone our wedding day hit really hard. My grandparents are already so vulnerable to getting sick, that pushing our wedding out a full year could mean that they would not live to see our wedding day.

Spencer and I decided that we didn’t want to have that risk, and to have a small ceremony in my parents backyard. It will just be our parents and siblings and we are inviting our extended family to attend via FaceTime. It will not be the same, but at least my grandparents will see us get married, even if it’s through a screen.

With the closures due to coronavirus I do not have a wedding dress to wear to our small ceremony. I would love to have an Azazie dress gifted to me for our special day.  Our backyard wedding will be June 20,2020 and even if it’s just us- I am going to marry my best friend.

Read another winner’s story here!