When Melissa Janco and John “Jay” Brennan began planning last year for their wedding, they envisioned returning to Rhode Island for the ceremony. The Ocean State is where the couple met, while both were attending Salve Regina University.

It was also — on the shores of a beach in Westerly, R.I. — where Jay knelt down one July afternoon last year and asked Melissa to marry him.

It made sense, then, to plan a grand return to Newport to celebrate their nuptials on July 4 of this year.

Then the coronavirus pandemic happened… but so did the wedding, thanks to a couple willing to adapt to rules that seemed to change by the week, and an equally flexible family who supported their decision to move forward with their plans.

On Saturday, July 4, Melissa Lynne Janco of Sandy Hook and Jay Aiden Brennan of North Haven were married in a ceremony in the front yard of the home of the bride’s parents, Kevin and Lisa Janco of Sandy Hook. The bride was given into marriage by her father.

The Reverend Matthew Crebbin, senior pastor of Newtown Congregational Church, officiated.

Changing Plans

Melissa and Jay were well into their wedding planning earlier this year. Save the date cards were sent out, but not invitations. Melissa said that that detail worked in their favor once plans really started to change due to the coronavirus pandemic.

She and her husband returned to her parents’s home recently, when they sat down — outdoors — to talk about planning a wedding as COVID-19 protocols changed almost weekly.

“The venue we had scheduled at called me in April,” Melissa said, “saying we had the option of rescheduling — we could pick another date this year, or we could pick a date next year and they would hold it, and they’d hold our normal date, too, in case things were better.

“But at that point we decided to just call it because it wasn’t looking like by July things were going to be back to normal, whatever that is,” she added. “We had done save the date cards, but not invitations, and it was time to do invitations.”

A small group was invited to the Janco home in Sandy Hook — “same date, different location,” Melissa’s mother Lisa said, laughing — and then plans were again put on hold.

“A lot of it was left up in the air until just about three weeks before our wedding date,” Melissa said. “It wasn’t until June that we really began planning, because we wanted to wait and see what was even allowed.”

When Melissa and Jay initially began thinking about an outdoor wedding in Sandy Hook, the state was discouraging gatherings. On June 1, Governor Ned Lamont amended a pandemic prohibition concerning large gatherings. As of that date, social gathering limits were raised to 10 people indoors and 25 people outdoors.

“At that point we were thinking just family, nobody else, probably not even bridesmaids, or aunts and uncles,” Melissa said. “It was going to be just immediate family.”

By June 17, however, when Connecticut reached its Phase 2 reopening stage, outdoor gatherings allowed up to 100 people. Wanting room for their guests to remain safe, however, Melissa and Jay still kept their guest list small.

“As things started to open, we opened it up to our aunts and uncles, and we planned a little after-celebration,” Melissa said. “We also invited a few of our forever friends, and not even all of them could make it.

“We ended up with 36 people for dinner,” she said.

Lisa Janco said the family hired someone to serve the food, “so everyone wasn’t touching everything.” Tables were spread out, she said, “mostly by family.” The family’s backyard and the large patio just behind the house served as the celebration location. About half of the guests, Melissa said, wore face masks for much of the event.

With the outdoor aspect of the gathering non-negotiable, the family would not allow themselves to think about bad weather.

“We were in denial that there was any potential for bad weather,” Melissa said, laughing. “We had no Plan B, or Plan C, as it was.”

Seating Solution

One challenge for planning an outdoor wedding during a pandemic was seating. Melissa and Jay did not want their guests to be seated in the front yard for the ceremony — where the view is spectacular — and then be asked to carry chairs to the backyard for the second half of the event.

“We certainly didn’t have enough chairs to just set up one set in the front and then another in the back,” Melissa said.

The solution presented itself through Buy Nothing Newtown (BNN). The local chapter of an international movement of free gifting, receiving, and gratitude, the Facebook-based movement has been extremely busy in recent months. The group’s motto is “Buy Nothing. Give. Share. Build Community.”

Groups encourage members to “give and receive, share, lend, and express gratitude through a worldwide network of micro-gift economies in which the true wealth is the web of connections formed between people who are real-life neighbors,” according to the description on the local Facebook page.

With so many people forced to stay home in recent months, cleaning and purging has become very popular. So has the use of BNN, and it was there that Lisa Janco found a solution for her daughter’s wedding.

About ten days before the wedding, Lisa said, “somebody posted on BNN that they had the pews from St John’s Church,” referring to the now-closed Episcopal Church on Washington Avenue. The BNN post was by Tracy Hoekenga, Lisa explained, one of the new owners of the former church. Hoekenga was looking for someone who would have a creative use for the seats.

“She and her husband had purchased the church,” Lisa said, “with the intent to turn it into a restaurant.”

“But then their plans changed,” said Melissa, “and they didn’t end up doing that. Now they’re renovating it into office space, she and her husband, and they were looking to get these pews new homes.”

Lisa responded to the BNN post, telling Hoekenga about the outdoor wedding being planned for Melissa and Jay.

“It was pretty close at that point,” Melissa said.

Although the pews were gifted to someone else, Lisa said she and Hoekenga kept in touch.

“I checked to see if they were gone, and she said, ‘No,’” Lisa said. “It sounds like she ended up having trouble with the delivery of them, because they were really heavy and they were hard to move.”

Once Hoekenga discovered that Melissa and Jay were Salve Regina graduates, who met through school — the same place Hoekenga and her husband met, Lisa later learned — that connection led to the pews going to the young couple after all.

In the end, Kevin Janco, his sons, and Jay reported to the historic Washington Avenue building to move the pews themselves, taking about a dozen half pews and two long ones.

“It was a lot of heavy work,” Jay said.

“On the most humid day of the year,” his wife added.

It poured the night before the wedding, so the pew setup was completed just hours before the ceremony.

“My dad had taken garden stakes, and he and Jay and [my brother] Matt measured the front lawn to figure out exactly where they were going to go, so that the morning of they could just get them outside,” Melissa said.

When setting the pews up, Jay said he and the others not only created an aisle for Melissa, they were careful to keep plenty of space between rows.

“We set them 7½ feet apart, to give people leg space,” he said.

After the wedding, Lisa Janco regifted most of the pews through Buy Nothing Newtown.

“I put a post up saying they were at the end of our driveway, first come first served, and they were all gone within 45 minutes,” she said.

Melissa and Jay held on to one of them, however.

“We kept one of the long ones, which is now living on our front porch,” Melissa said.

‘A Community Effort’

On her wedding day, Melissa wore a beautiful Maggie Sottero ball gown from Julie Allen Bridals of Newtown. She walked out from the front door of her parents’ home, down the front steps, and crossed the lawn to an arbor, where her fiancé and Rev Crebbin were waiting.

Tim Cervera, a friend of the couple, “brought his keyboard and sat on our front porch to play piano,” said Melissa.

She made her entrance to the classic Pachelbel’s selection “Canon in D.”

Melissa carried a bouquet of white roses and blue hydrangeas held in a wrap fashioned from one of the sleeves of her mother’s wedding gown. The Janco family had also created a decoration for the front door of their home using Lisa Janco’s veil.

Family friend Graceann Hanulik helped with decorations, including sewing antique lace curtains and adding artificial flowers to the arbor used for the ceremony. Additional curtains adorned the front porch, “to make that look pretty,” said Melissa.

“She had the pew bows left from her daughter’s wedding, so we were able to put those on the pews,” she added. “Every time she came for a visit, she came with more ideas,” Melissa said. “It was amazing.”

Melissa’s bridesmaids were Dena Riccio of Newtown, Heather Leone of Sandy Hook, and Michelle Green of Sandy Hook. The bridesmaids also carried bouquets of white roses and blue hydrangeas.

Jay is a son of Lisa and John Brennan of North Haven.

His ushers were his brother, Ryan Brennan of North Haven; and Melissa’s brothers, Matthew Janco and Andrew Janco, both of Sandy Hook.

Rev Crebbin and his wife Martha sang “Give Yourself To Love” as part of the ceremony.

Another friend of the couple had a Facebook Live feed running, “so a lot of friends and family who couldn’t be here were still able to watch,” Jay said.

“It really was a community effort,” he added.

In addition to those who attended in person or watched over Facebook, a few dozen people — including members of Newtown Congregational Church, who have watched as all three Janco children have been baptized and grown up in that church — showed up that Saturday afternoon to view the ceremony from the edge of the yard and along the driveway.

“That was amazing,” Lisa said. “To look out and see all of these people who were there when she was baptized, who made the time to come here for her big day, was just beautiful.”

Melissa is a 2013 graduate of Newtown High School. She continued her education at Salve Regina University, graduating in 2017.

She is a special education teacher for Danbury Public Schools.

Jay is a 2013 graduate of North Haven High School. He also continued his education at Salve Regina, graduating in 2017. He is a nurse at Yale-New Haven Hospital.

While they did not take the southern honeymoon they had planned, the Brennans are far from finished celebrating their nuptials.

For one thing, they did make it out to Rhode Island last month, where they spent time at beaches and visiting Newport.

“It’s not what we planned, but we made the best of it,” Jay said.

They plan to return next year, with a full complement of friends and family. Their venue has already reserved July 4, 2021 for them, according to Melissa.

“We’ve decided it will be a one-year anniversary party,” she added. “We were also able to get all of our vendors, too, which made us super happy.”

The Brennans are planning a renewal ceremony for that weekend.

“It’ll be a short and sweet,” said Melissa. “Pastor Matt already said he would do that, and then we’ll celebrate with everyone.”