Despite being in the midst of a world-altering pandemic, Chardon native Joe Casavecchia and his wife, Emma, managed to tie the knot in a destination wedding out West.
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Despite being in the midst of a world-altering pandemic, Chardon native Joe Casavecchia and his wife, Emma, managed to tie the knot in a destination wedding out West.
Not without a few coronavirus-induced alterations, however.
An awe-inspiring backdrop of the Grand Canyon was swapped out for a random Colorado courthouse lobby.
Emma’s wedding dress took the form of leggings and a sweater, while Joe’s ensemble consisted of a gray hoodie, jeans and a Carhartt cap.
And family and close friends — including dapperly clad groomsmen and bridesmaids donning dusty blue dresses — were replaced with a court clerk, sheriff’s deputy and security guard.
But none of that matters to the new couple. COVID-19 did not stop them from getting married. And they and their loved ones are safe.
“Overall, I think it was a great experience. I’m sad that the wedding was canceled, but I’m married and am at home safe and healthy with my wife,” Joe said in an email interview. “Emma and I love taking road trips together — I’ve been to over one-third of all the counties in America … including all 88 in Ohio, and Emma has been with me through many of those counties. On each trip, we always have to adapt for something. Usually it’s weather, but there’s always an element of uncertainty.
“But nothing could have prepared us for driving across the country and back during all of this. The fact that we had our wedding at a random courthouse in Colorado on a whim sums up the strength of our relationship, in my opinion,” he added. “Things can and will get crazy, but if you’re smart and prepared and can adapt with the person you love, everything will figure itself out in the end.”
It also likely doesn’t hurt that Emma, 22, from Corydon, Iowa, and Joe, 24, from Chardon, are well versed in adaptation and being nontraditional.
“Believe it or not, we actually met on Twitter. Neither of us really remembers how we found each other there,” Emma said. “It was 2016. Joe was completing his undergrad (degree) at Arizona State (University) and I was in my first year at Iowa State (University). We followed each other for a while before Joe sent me a private message. He was planning his trip from Arizona home to Ohio and would be going through Iowa. He knew from my Twitter bio that I was from Iowa, so he asked me if there was anything in particular he should stop and see.
“I think I mentioned the ‘World’s Largest Truckstop’ on I-80 and maybe the ‘Field of Dreams’ in Dyersville. I also told him that I would be involved in a leadership conference at that time, but that he could stop by for coffee if he wanted to,” Emma added. “After that first conversation, we just sort of kept talking. We became good friends. We could call each other on the phone almost every day and video chat as much as we could. I don’t remember it ever being very ‘romantic’ or ‘flirty.’ We just enjoyed talking to one another.”
Emma said in March of 2017, she was getting ready to go to Costa Rica for a study abroad program and realized on the way home, she would have an eight-hour layover in Phoenix.
“I told Joe and we decided to try to have lunch during the layover,” she said. “My flight landed in Phoenix and I found Joe waiting for me. ‘You come here often?’ I asked him. I thought he was pretty cute.”
Joe drove Emma to Tortilla Flat in the Superstition Mountains, passing through the desert landscape.
“I had never been to this part of the county before. I had never even seen a cactus,” she recalled. “We got to the restaurant and were relieved to find out that we were able to have great conversations in person, not just over the phone like we had been doing for the last few months. After lunch, (Joe) took me to a scenic lookout and picked me wildflowers. When we got back to the airport, we hugged, not quite sure when we would be able to see each other again.”
A few days later, Joe bought a ticket to Iowa and flew that weekend to see her again.
“We hugged at the bottom of the escalator at the Des Moines International Airport. On the way to Ames on March 31, he asked me if I wanted to be his girlfriend. I laughed and said, ‘I thought I already was.’”
Emma said over the next year and a half, Joe drove to Iowa every other weekend from Chicago to see her as they “mastered the long distance thing.”
“We were able to spend summers together driving all over the U.S. during off-time and on the weekends. Road trips were, and still are, our favorite pastime together,” she said.
In December of 2018, Joe — who will be graduating in June from the University of Chicago Law School — finished his last final exam at ASU and made his way to Iowa to meet Emma.
“We were planning to meet at my mom’s house in Corydon and then go to a Kansas City Chiefs game that night. I finished my last final and started heading south from Ames to Corydon. Joe told me there was an accident in Indianola and that I should go through Melcher to get home,” Emma said. “Just outside of Melcher, I saw a car on the side of County Road S45 that looked just like Joe’s car. He called me and said, ‘You gonna pull over?’ Then hung up. I thought he was there to drive in front of me the rest of the way home because I told him I was tired from finals. I got out of the car to greet him and he got out holding a little box. He got down on one knee and asked me to marry him.”
Out of all the places they had travelled together, the couple agreed the Grand Canyon was their favorite, so they decided to get married there on March 20 with a few close friends and family, and schedule a reception in May in Corydon for everyone who was unable to make the trip to the wedding.
“Everyone was really excited to come to the Grand Canyon,” Joe said of those who could make it. “We made up itineraries for everyone because we were so excited. We had been there many times before and we were eager to show everyone around.”
So, plans were made, reservations were booked, everything was in order.
And then COVID-19 struck.
“We were monitoring events very closely. Emma’s job (with the World Food Prize Foundation, an international nonprofit organization based out of Des Moines, Iowa) had been training her to work remotely in anticipation of a stay-at-home order and my school had told us that we are doing the entire spring quarter online,” Joe said. “We left Chicago on Saturday, March 14, to head to the wedding, and at that point, we thought a stay-at-home order was far enough away that we would be able to sneak in the wedding before we had to get home. We figured the Grand Canyon would be closed, but that we could get married on the side of the road or something out there if needed.”
Joe’s grandma, who is 83, decided not to come to the wedding.
“After then, we started to reckon with the idea that this wedding might not happen, but we were in denial,” he said. “We spent a night in Grand Island, Nebraska, and woke up before sunrise to see the sandhill crane migration on the Platte River Valley. Then we drove through the Nebraska Sandhills region on the way to Colorado. At a small travel stop, a farmer from Valentine, Nebraska, looked at us and said, ‘You’re from Ohio? Where you headed? Are you trying to escape that coronavirus?’ Coronavirus was all anybody could talk about.
“There were hardly any cars on the road anywhere, even though stay-at-home orders weren’t in place yet. Our hands were dried and cracked from how often we were washing our hands. The whole time, we were by ourselves. We called our families every night to update them, hear their thoughts and pass the time.”
On March 15, two more guests called to tell Joe and Emma they wouldn’t be coming to the wedding because they didn’t want to take the risk of catching COVID-19 and becoming a carrier in their families and communities.
“That was pretty much the moment where we realized our concern shouldn’t be about the park closing and should be, ‘Are we being reckless by doing this and asking people to come?’” Joe said.
The couple drove to Grand Mesa, recalling how eerie it was being on top of the mesa by themselves, overlooking all of Western Colorado and having no cell reception to check the news.
“It was amazingly peaceful. It felt like everything was in limbo, and it was, but up there by ourselves, I realized how on edge I was about the whole situation,” Joe said. “We drove down to Montrose, Colorado, near Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, and there, we listened to President Trump’s latest briefing, where he recommended against groups of more than 10 people and against discretionary travel. Our wedding was going to have about 50 people. Almost immediately after, my sister, who is pregnant and due in September, called and said her doctor told her not to come to the wedding. That pretty much made up our mind and within minutes, we had made the decision to cancel. We didn’t make any immediate plans. We called our parents, who were very understanding and then texted the rest of our guests.”
The couple’s next mission was to drive home as fast, but as safely as possible.
“We were planning to stay in Geauga County, alternating between my mom’s house in Middlefield and my dad’s house in Chardon. After I graduate, we will be living in Cleveland, so we wanted to be in Ohio during the pandemic to settle back into the area and start looking at apartments as soon as this is over. But Chardon is 25 hours from Montrose, and Emma’s hometown in Iowa is 15 hours from Montrose,” Joe said. “We briefly thought about getting married right there in Montrose, but decided against it. On the drive from Montrose, we had (the impending stay-at-home order) on our minds, as well as the fact that we weren’t having a wedding. I would cry for 10 minutes while Emma held it together, and then it was her turn to cry, and then rinse and repeat. We were driving across one of the most beautiful roads I’ve ever seen, over mountain peaks above 12,000 feet, and neither of us cared. We were exhausted and just wanted to be home.”
The couple grew scared the courts in Ohio and Iowa would be closed and they wouldn’t be able to get married for a while.
They looked at marriage license requirements in Kansas, which had a three-day waiting period.
“The morning of the 17th, we left Limon pretty early. After about 45 minutes, I asked Emma if she just wanted to get married today. She said yes, but also that she wasn’t sure how that could happen due to Kansas’s waiting period. I knew there was one county left in Colorado before the state line — Kit Carson County — so Emma looked up the marriage license requirements. There was no waiting period,” Joe said. “So I called the county recorder in Burlington, Colorado. She answered the phone and said, ‘Well, if you aren’t a Kit Carson County resident, you can’t come in the courthouse. But I can bring down the paperwork and help you fill it out and we can help you get married today.’
“They ended up letting us inside the courthouse, but we had to stay in the lobby with the deputy sheriff and the other security guard,” Joe continued. “The clerk came downstairs and helped us fill out the forms. Once the license was all ready to go and we were officially married, the clerk said, ‘Okay, now in Kit Carson County, we have a tradition. First kiss!’ So we kissed right then and there and the clerk asked the security guards to clap and cheer for us. We went back to the car and read our vows to each other.”
The couple called their families, who were excited for them, Joe said.
“Our wedding date ended up being exactly three years after our first date during Emma’s layover in Phoenix,” he said. “When we got to Iowa that night, Emma’s dad and stepmom were all dressed up in the outfits they were going to wear to the wedding. Upon arrival, they threw rice at us, still in the bag, and said, ‘But don’t open that. We need it for food during the quarantine.’
“It was beautiful, fun and capped off a joyful day,” he added.
Emma said the entire experience was a reminder of how great she and Joe are together.
“We were able to help each other through the uncertainties and sadness of not being able to have the wedding we had been planning for so long,” she said.
“Our marriage was tested right off the bat and we nailed it. I’m sad that I couldn’t wear my dress and that our family wasn’t able to witness our wedding,” added Emma. “We’re going to try to plan some sort of ceremony or reception for everyone to be able to celebrate with us once this pandemic settles down.
“In the meantime, I’m thankful to be safe with my husband and surrounded by family. From now on, every year on March 17, you can find us celebrating our anniversary by making a toast with some Corona beer.”
