I wanted to wait until this part of the story was over – wanted to wait until we had this neat and pretty resolution before I started to tell our beautiful crazy story.

By resolution, in this case, I mean marriage.

And that’s something we’ve been waiting for since April of 2020.

And we literally legally cannot do it in the country of Israel.

We thought we had the solution in hand – we even had a wedding date picked out. January 11th. We were going to get married on the beach on Mahe island in Seychelles.

We were so close. We put down a deposit. I even bought my wedding dress.

But then the British strain of COVID-19 surfaced. Coupled with the rising numbers in Israel, they started to talk lockdown.

And then, for the third time, Israel locked down. Then Seychelles confirmed a case of the British strain. And they locked down as well.

Like a puff of smoke – away it went.

Just like every other idea we’ve pursued for the past nine months.

So – screw it. Let’s start talking about it. Let’s start telling the story now. Right here in the middle.

I’m an American ex-pat living in Israel in the time of corona.

I’m trying to marry my Israeli partner, in a country where mixed-religion weddings are forbidden.

And the usual course of circumvention – which would be to fly to nearby Cyprus for a civil wedding – is impossible because they’ve been locked down with two-way quarantine (a lot of expense, and a lot of missed work for Ido) since the beginning of the pandemic.

So let’s start the story in the middle – of how we met, how we got here, of why a devoted yet anti-marriage couple are working so hard to GET married, and why it’s been so damn hard.