00:00All the pressure fell off and we knew, okay, we're just going to have an extremely small wedding,
00:04but it's going to be all right, you know, we're just going to get married and it's fine.
00:07This is just our wedding, this is just our story now.
00:10Hi, I'm Robert.
00:11Hi, I'm Annie.
00:13And because of the coronavirus, we had to change our wedding plans and live stream our ceremony.
00:17First year, we both were in the same church.
00:20I was there before and then Annie came and joined the church.
00:23And we basically didn't have any contact.
00:25I was getting interested in her and so I just made some effort to get into conversations
00:31and to get to know her a bit.
00:33And that's where we basically met and started talking to each other.
00:36At some point, I asked for a number and then we basically went on our first date.
00:41And he asked for my number.
00:43He didn't just find it out, found it out somehow.
00:45I like that.
00:46Anyone who has had the privilege of knowing Annie and Robert knows that they are a total power couple,
00:52have so much energy and vision.
00:55They are full of life.
00:57They are always ready to encourage others.
00:59And they just invest in their community so much and the people around them.
01:03My plan for the engagement was we went to an area a bit more north in Germany where you have
01:08lots of lakes.
01:09And I just didn't plan which lake we're going to go to.
01:12I just like, there's lots of lakes.
01:14We're just going to go to a nice lake, find a good spot.
01:16I kind of guessed now, you know, something would happen.
01:18Because there was a spot, one spot to the water and I was like, hey, let's take this one.
01:23And then he was like, no, it's too close to the walk, to the road.
01:28And I was like, how special do you want to have this spot?
01:31Like we ended up in the jungle basically and went on my knee.
01:34It was such a moment full of joy.
01:37Very sweaty engagement.
01:40But very beautiful too.
01:42Robert, I remember, he called me and we prepared a surprise party for them with some friends together.
01:50Congratulations!
01:53We cheered with all our friends and family.
01:56That you did really well with it.
01:58I mean everything, but especially with the surprise party.
02:01Because we love that, you know, to have our friends around.
02:07Basically for our wedding planning, for us it was 250 people.
02:11We were looking actually for a church building, which actually took us quite a while to find that church.
02:18But then we found it.
02:19I made this mood board of how you can decorate it and lots of fairy lights and installation at the
02:25altar.
02:26Flowers and all of that, right?
02:28Ani really had a vision.
02:29One of the last things we booked actually was the honeymoon.
02:34We thought that's once in a lifetime.
02:36And so we just booked it.
02:38It happened.
02:40Two weeks before I think it was that they said that you can't meet more than a thousand people here
02:47in Berlin.
02:47We wouldn't be a thousand people, so we still kind of felt safe.
02:50The moment where it really would impact our wedding.
02:55And that was actually my bachelor party.
02:58That's where I got the news that the government released the regulation that meetings more than 50 people are not
03:09allowed.
03:09So they took it down from a thousand straight to a 50 people.
03:13So Ani was in our apartment with my mom and I come back home with my dad and my brother
03:17who were at the bachelor party with me.
03:19And we came back and we were like, do you know the news?
03:22We already cried it all out and now we're good with it.
03:26We already cried out all the tears, so now we're good.
03:29Everything she touches is beautiful.
03:31So it was heartbreaking, even just as a friend to imagine, having to re-plan your day.
03:38This time is not about being fearful anymore right now, but it's actually about taking responsibility.
03:43We are definitely believing that this was God coming into the situation and just saying, hey, this is okay, I'm
03:49with you.
03:49And this is the right decision to do.
03:51We still were excited for them because we were shooting them on and we made plans how to make it
03:57happen.
03:57We actually made the decision to only have mom and dad and our siblings there.
04:02And we did it in the church office.
04:04We did the ceremony there.
04:05Super small and super amazing.
04:08We got to set up some of the flowers that I bought.
04:12Nobody was surprised when this crisis hit and nothing was going to stop them from getting married.
04:18A good friend of us is just like, hey guys, and you know what you can do?
04:22We have this film studio here in our church office to film the online church services.
04:28We can use it to live stream our wedding.
04:31Live stream wedding.
04:32Of course, you know, one moment that I was like, oh my gosh, this is not going to happen how
04:36I wanted it to come down the aisle, right?
04:38I first thought it wouldn't happen and I would just walk in and be like, hi, you know, live stream,
04:42hey, we're going to say our wedding vows.
04:45And then last minute we actually decided, okay, my dad is going to bring me into this live stream and
04:51hand me over to Robert.
04:58In the end of the day, it was different, very different, but it was very beautiful.
05:03You could feel the love and support just being poured in from a distance, on the comments, through social media.
05:10It was just so beautiful and they were so happy, which is at the end of the day, all that
05:15matters.
05:16They had a microphone over the heads of my family coming down and I was like, that is so funny,
05:22you know, I never,
05:23I mean, that just is not the view that I expected as a bride from the altar, right?
05:27If you look into the audience.
05:33In the end, actually, what I would say, the silver lining is that even more people got to watch,
05:38even more people got to be live there and see us.
05:41And that was what the most important thing for us was with this wedding,
05:45that we do our vows before our friends and family, before God.
05:48We got so many messages from all around the world, literally, that say,
05:52I was there with you and it felt so amazing and that just made me so happy, you know,
05:58because that was what I didn't want to miss.
06:00And that was what made me so sad at the beginning when we said we're not going to have it.
06:05And then still we had it, you know, in such a different way than I could have ever planned it
06:10before.
06:10One very practical silver lining is that the wedding was way cheaper than expected.
06:18We wouldn't have this couch.
06:19We both cannot really grasp that this is real life right now because it's all, all has changed.
06:26We end up in this new flat that we've never been in before, living together, not seeing anyone else than
06:31us.
06:31You know, it just feels a little bit like a dream.
06:34I asked Ani on her walk, I was like, so what are you and like, what are you and Robert
06:38doing together for like date nights and quarantine?
06:42She's like, I'm going crazy.
06:44The other night I literally made him stare into my eyes for five minutes.
06:49She's like, we were dying laughing.
06:51If I would have to nail it down to one takeaway lesson from all of this,
06:56I would say that it's all going to be okay.
06:59Whatever you plan in the end, you know, it's going to be okay.
07:03My grandma sent us a message, I think one or two days before, and she's like, hey, this is a
07:10little encouragement.
07:11Here's a photo from our wedding.
07:13I think we were like 12 people.
07:15At the end of the day, it was just everything it was supposed to be.
07:19It was a celebration of their commitment to each other.
07:22They came in with such a joyful heart.
07:25So I was really impressed, yeah, how peaceful and how joyful they were.
07:30The thing is, this is the time we live in right now, to write a story, your own story, in
07:35this season and make it actually a story of love.
07:37Afterwards, it's a great story to tell.
07:39I mean, you know, like when you tell your children or your grandchildren, when we got married, there was this
07:44crazy virus and we had to do it in the smallest circle and we did it with a live stream.
07:48I think it's going to be a great story, so I can definitely encourage people to do it.
