Like lots of 2020 couples, Eunice, a Brazilian criminal lawyer, and Louis, a Dutch mathematician (who met in Hebrew class in Bremen, Germany!) had a very different wedding than the one they’d originally planned. However, in their case it wasn’t due to the pandemic: tragically, Louis’s father, Theo, was diagnosed with terminal cancer this year. Getting married without him there was, in the bride’s words, “not an option,” and so the couple shifted their plans from a June 2021 beach wedding in the Netherlands to a local affair close to home in Bremen in September 2020.
It wasn’t easy – not least since, due to COVID, only Eunice’s mother was able to make it to the wedding from Brazil – but Eunice and Louis managed to plan the most incredibly beautiful, joyous day with Theo present to bless them, deliver an ultra-moving speech, and even dance with them in his wheelchair. It was incredibly bittersweet – Theo passed away just three days after the chuppah – but the couple were so grateful to have him present, and for the way their photography and videography team, made up of Sabine Lange and her sister Beate of Photo Lauricella, managed to capture not only the love and happiness of the day but also the sorrow of the pair’s impending loss.
Every so often, we come across a wedding that really shows us what it’s all about – and this was most certainly one of them. In Eunice’s words:
I honestly can say it was the best day of my life. I can’t say it was the setting I dreamed, but it was the setting I needed to grow and to become a stronger woman and closer to G’d. For that I’m grateful.
Read on for more wisdom from this wonderful bride.
How we met
Eunice the bride: We met while trying to improve our Hebrew. We ended up signing up for the same class at the university of Bremen, where we met, live and got married.
