Couple gets hitched in coronavirus-style wedding

NISSWA, Minn. — Lindsi Northenscold and Matthew Hall weren't letting anyone or anything — not even a worldwide pandemic or a threat of rain — stop them from getting married.

Northenscold, the daughter of Kim and Jeff Northenscold of rural Nisswa, and Hall, the son of the late Dennis Hall and Lori and Pete Schmitz of Verndale, got married Saturday afternoon, May 23, at Christ Community Church in Nisswa.

The couple stood before the pastor under the overhang at the front entrance of the church, with their parents standing 6 feet away. Close family and friends stood outside their vehicles in the parking lot, watching the bride and groom and listening to the ceremony streaming through online radio. One group backed their truck into a space right up front and used the tailgate as convenient seating for the ceremony.

GALLERY: Drive-In Wedding
The couple had to limit the number of guests as the parking lot would only hold so many vehicles while maintaining social distancing. Rain threatened with a light mist a couple of times during the wedding, but it didn't start raining until the ceremony was over. When the couple was pronounced husband and wife and had their first kiss, guests honked their horns and clapped.

When the short wedding ceremony was done, guests were invited to a drive-by reception at Northenscold’s home, where people drove around a circle loop driveway to congratulate them and have some coffee and cake — all while social distancing.

The couple was originally going to get married June 20 and invites were sent out. Then the coronavirus pandemic hit, everything was closing and they had to come up with Plan B.

“We knew nothing was going to change (with the pandemic),” Lindsi Northenscold said in an interview earlier last week before the drive-up wedding. “So we just figured we would get married after the (wedding) shower. ... We really had no other choice.”

Kim Northenscold said the end goal is to get married, so it really didn’t matter if it was a big or small wedding, or if it would be a drive-up wedding. Getting married was all that mattered.

“I just wanted the wedding to be after the shower,” Kim Northenscold said with a smile. “Otherwise it would have just been weird.”

Lindsi Northenscold and Hall had all their wedding shower gifts shipped from Amazon and Target to Northenscold’s rural Nisswa home and they opened them May 16. They said it was fun as they didn’t know who the package was from until they opened it.

Depending on what happens with the world in response to COVID-19, the couple may have a larger ceremony and may renew their vows if things reopen and life gets to be more normal.