akash.samaroo@cnc3.co.tt
Senior Reporter
While Dian told Daniel yes, Mother Nature said no. When the Santa Cruz couple envisioned their dream wedding on Maracas Bay, it is doubtful they had thoughts of heavy rainfall, tropical storm winds, and the North Coast Road littered with fallen tree branches.
The popular gazebo located along the jetty near the fishing village in Maracas, where the two would have stood with their officiating pastor, was instead left empty and battered with intermittent rainfall.
While this may have been enough to move others to tears and despair, a smiling Daniel Lawrence accepted that while they could not control the weather, they could still choose to be locked in matrimony on that day. Clad in a white vest and shorts instead of his tuxedo, Lawrence told Guardian Media their first red flag came when the pastor cancelled on them yesterday morning, a few hours before the 10 am ceremony.
“I was sleeping, and the pastor called and said he could not make it because of the news and everything that he heard. He said we have to put it off for another day. But we couldn’t do that,” Lawrence explained.
However, he said they were determined to make it happen. “The wife and I said, hear what, we will look for somewhere else to do it; this has to go on somewhere or the other,” he added.
That ‘somewhere else’ turned out to be the house of God. “The weather threw us off badly; we could not do anything, not even the tent rental company could come. So, we changed the venue; things must go on still, so we’re doing it at a church. It’s sad we couldn’t do it out here, but that’s how life is and things must go on,” Lawrence said.
Lawrence’s bride-to-be was also in good spirits. She sat in their car, waiting to leave for the other venue. She waved and smiled brilliantly at the Guardian Media team as she held their two dogs in her lap. Looking at her, Lawrence continued, “We were already so close! To give up now, it didn’t make sense.” Asked how they still managed to make the best of the moment given how pressured some couples are on their wedding day, Lawrence said, “Well, you know obstacles come in the way for good things not to happen, so today we’re showing that nothing must stop good things that you are going to do, you understand? Just go forward with it.”
The couple has been together for around 13 years. Daniel said he was now 43 years old, but he seemed to have trouble remembering the age of his fiancée. Guardian Media advised that now would be a poor time for him to ask her. Laughing, he said, “She’s about two years younger than me.”
While driving off, Lawrence joked that he thought the most the bad weather would have done was reduce the size of the wedding’s guest list and, in turn, save them some money.
But there would not have even been onlookers had the ceremony taken place. Heeding the warning about staying away from beaches, Maracas Bay, a popular site, was virtually deserted.
A coconut vendor walked dejectedly past a handful of beach lounge chairs left on the sand. None of the food vendors were open for business. There were also no sea bathers at the Las Cuevas facility, at least up until midday.
An official there said a person came for a swim earlier in the day but was dissuaded from doing so by the facility’s security guard.
“The Government should have officially closed the beach so we could stop people from coming at all,” he posited.
Meanwhile, the North Coast Road remained passable, at least for most of the day. Heavy winds blew large tree branches onto the roadway at various points, creating hazards along the meandering path. Workers from the Ministry of Works and Transport were on hand, equipped with a chain saw to clear the obstacles.