09/21/2020
By Ed Brennen

They could have done what so many other engaged couples did and postpone their weddings until next year.

But these River Hawk lovebirds didn’t want to let the coronavirus pandemic dictate the terms of their happily-ever-afters.

So in spite of the pandemic, several UMass Lowell alumni and students got married this summer — in safe and responsible, socially distanced ceremonies where veils and open bars were replaced by face masks and hand sanitizer.

Most of the ceremonies were outdoors, and all of them had fewer than 10 guests. Some were livestreamed on Zoom so family and friends could watch from afar. But for all four of these couples, the scaled-down ceremonies will be followed, hopefully someday soon, by the big, traditional celebrations they’ve always dreamed of.

Here are their wedding stories:

‘The only good thing of the summer’

The invitations were sent. The venue was booked: a rustic barn on a working hay farm in Strafford, N.H., where 90 guests would enjoy wood-fired pizza, and ice cream and beer trucks would serve into the night. The custom decorations with the wedding date — June 6, 2020 — were ordered, as was a wood-engraved guest book.

After getting engaged in May 2019, Devonne Sutton ’09 andJustin Lawler’09 had almost everything set for their wedding this summer.

“We didn’t want a plated dinner; it was going to be very casual,” says Sutton, a Lowell native who earned a degree in English from theCollege of Fine Arts, Humanities and Social Sciencesand now works as an associate director for U.S. external communications at Biogen.

When the pandemic struck in March, the stress began. Keeping the date was important to them; Lawler had told his father that’s when the wedding would be shortly before he passed away last year. But as the pandemic grew, reality started to sink in.

“We kept trying to be hopeful, checking the news and the numbers, but it became more and more evident that this was not going to happen any time soon,” says Lawler, associate director ofCampus Recreationwho earned a master’s of business administration from the Manning School of Business.

“It was such a stressful time,” says Sutton, who made the final call three weeks before the wedding: postpone the celebration in Strafford for a year but keep their original wedding date and instead have a small ceremony with a few family members and close friends.

“We knew that with everything so crazy in the world, the faster we made the decision, the faster we could get excited about what we were actually going to plan for this year, and then look ahead to whatever celebration we’re going to do next year,” Sutton says.

So on June 6, Lawler and Sutton tied the knot at the Doyle Conservation Park in Lawler’s hometown of Leominster, Mass. Sutton’s younger sister, alum Joanna Sutton ’13, officiated the ceremony. (“The good news is I can do it all again next year if I mess it up this year,” she quipped.)

Not even a sudden downpour that sent everyone scurrying for cover could put a damper on the newlyweds’ special day.

“There’s so much uncertainty and stress right now, so it was really fun to get together for an afternoon with our family and just laugh,” says Sutton, whose mom kept telling the couple, “Thank goodness you got married. It was the only good thing of the summer.”

And now they’re looking ahead to next June, when they plan to celebrate their one-year anniversary with many more friends and family in Strafford — and also take their postponed honeymoon to Italy, Croatia and Montenegro.

“We’re lucky that most of our vendors were gracious and allowed us to rebook everything,” says Lawler, who looks forward to giving his groomsmen the special baseball bat mugs he had made for them.

“Everyone will be so excited to be together again after so long. It will be nice to have a wedding where we can hug people,” adds Sutton, who saved the wedding dress she bought for next year’s ceremony.

‘More than we could have hoped for’

June 5 was a picture-perfect day for a wedding on the North Shore of Massachusetts. As boats bobbed in the blue of Marblehead Harbor,Manning Schoolalumni Mike Pindrus ’18 and Michelle Anggara ’19 said their vows in front of a small group of family and friends at Chandler Hovey Park.

“We couldn’t have a big ceremony like we wanted, but at the same time, I think the limitation of people made it more personal and special,” Pindrus says. “And we got really lucky with the day; it was a gorgeous day right on the water. It ended up being more than we could have hoped for.”

The couple, who met at UML in 2015, had planned on having a wedding this year that would include Anggara’s family from Indonesia. But when the pandemic restricted international travel, they had to make a decision.

“Our life plan was to get married, and we didn’t want the pandemic to put that on hold,” Pindrus says. “We were able to plan it in a way that worked for us, so we decided to just go for it.”

Anggara’s family was able to watch the wedding back home on Zoom, as one of the guests livestreamed the ceremony from their phone.

The newlyweds are currently both working from home in Nashua, N.H. Pindrus is a financial analyst for Raytheon and Anggara is a business analyst for software company Quick Base.

Pindrus, who was born in Russia and moved to Swampscott, Mass., with his family when he was 7, says he and Anggara look forward to celebrating in person with her family.

“As soon as everything goes back to normal, our first trip will be to Indonesia to have a ceremony there,” he says.

‘We didn’t want to wait’

Among the guests at the Pindrus-Anggara wedding were two friends from UML: alumni Raissa Yona ’15 and Christianto Putra ’16.

Yona and Putra had been engaged for more than two years, so when Anggara gave Yona her bridal bouquet, Putra knew the pressure was on.

“When that happened, Raissa was like, ‘Hmmm … when’s my ceremony?’” recalls a chuckling Putra, who earned his master’s degree in clinical laboratory science and is currently a Ph.D. student in pharmaceutical sciences in theZuckerberg College of Health Sciences.

Yona and Putra, who are both from Indonesia, met in 2014 at an Indonesian festival in Boston’s Copley Square — where they discovered they both went to UMass Lowell.

“What are the chances, right?” says Putra, who proposed to Yona three years later in — where else? — a CVS.

He can explain.

“I planned to bring her to a winery in New Hampshire, and on the way there she said she wanted to stop at CVS to buy some water,” Putra says. “She needed my phone for some reason, so she reached into my pocket and felt the red box with the ring. She said, ‘What’s this?’

“We don’t know when this pandemic will be over ... so we just decided, OK, let’s do it.” -Raissa Yona ’15

“So I just proposed to her in a CVS.”

It was the moment, not the location, that mattered to Yona.

“I knew we were going to get engaged, but I kind of ruined his plan,” says Yona, who earned a master’s degree in plastics engineering from theFrancis College of Engineeringand now works as a research engineer at Lockheed Martin in Andover.

They planned to have their wedding sometime this year in Indonesia. But then the pandemic hit ... and then Anggara gave Yona her bouquet.

“We don’t know when this pandemic will be over, and we didn’t want to wait until next year, so we just decided, OK, let’s do it,” Yona says.

So on July 10, at a park near the water in Salem, Mass., Yona and Putra tied the knot with eight of their closest friends in attendance. Close to 50 friends and family back home in Indonesia woke up at 3 a.m. to watch the ceremony online, as a guest streamed it on Zoom from their iPad.

“It was kind of a blessing in disguise, because I’ve always wanted to have an outdoor wedding,” says Yona, who notes that outdoor weddings are uncommon in Jakarta because of the unpredictable tropical weather.

The newlyweds, who recently bought a condo in downtown Lowell, hosted a small wedding reception in their building’s community room, with takeout from one of their favorite restaurants: Priya Indian Cuisine in Chelmsford, Mass.

“It was a really nice day with our close friends,” says Yona, who still looks forward to a big, traditional wedding with their families in a hotel ballroom in Jakarta.

‘Traditional rules are out the window’

It was a scene straight out of the movies.

Nazeli Acosta, a physics major in theKennedy College of Sciences, arrived at Stanford University’s PULSE Center in June 2019 to check in for her U.S. Department of Energy summer laboratory internship.

Coming from the opposite direction was Jorge Morales, a Ph.D. student in physics from Indiana University Bloomington. They both looked lost as their paths met in the middle of the would-be camera frame.

“Do you know where the sign-in sheet is?” they asked one another. They decided to look for the program coordinator together.

“It’s so funny how it happened. We just hit it off,” says Acosta, who spent the next eight weeks getting to know Morales — when she wasn’t learning how to use X-ray crystallography to decode the structure of an enzyme.

When the internship ended, their long-distance relationship began. Acosta moved back to UML and Morales went back to Bloomington. A few weeks later, he came to visit Acosta and meet her parents at their home in Methuen, Mass. Every month or two, he would visit Acosta on campus, where she was a resident advisor at University Suites.

By the spring, they were talking about marriage. Morales was visiting Acosta in Methuen in late May when he suggested they go for a walk at nearby Greycourt State Park. Acosta thought a proposal might be coming, but Morales threw her for a loop and started talking about how he didn’t understand the importance of buying a ring and getting engaged. Acosta’s anticipation started turning to anger.

When they reached the top of a hill in the middle of the park, Morales dropped to bended knee and proposed.

“It was a good prank. He caught me off guard,” says Acosta, who said “yes” through tears of joy.

They planned to get married this December. But when Acosta learned she would be able to complete her final semester of undergraduate studies remotely this fall because of the pandemic, that opened an opportunity for them to be together sooner than expected.

So they decided to wed on July 30 at the First Spanish Free Methodist Church, Acosta’s church in Lawrence, Mass. Acosta’s parents and Morales’ mom attended the intimate 25-minute ceremony.

“It was all very quick and simple,” Acosta says. “I didn’t worry about the dress or decorations. This allowed us to focus more on the special act of becoming one.”They still plan to have a more traditional ceremony this December, where they can renew their vows.

“At first, I was worried. Oh my goodness, two weddings? I didn’t know if I was doing something that wasn’t socially acceptable,” Acosta says. “But it turns out because of the pandemic, all the traditional rules are out the window. Everyone is having to grapple with how they’re going to celebrate their weddings during this time. It’s not easy.”