GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — A couple from the Lansing area expected to get married in downtown Grand Rapids on Saturday, April 18th.
Auden Myers and Madelyn Johnson met four years ago while they both studied at GVSU. After they got engaged, the two picked the venue at the downtown market for their love of plants and the seasonal timing with the greenhouse there for the wedding celebration.
About a month ago, Myers and Johnson officially postponed their wedding.
"We know that it is for the best," said Johnson. "I would rather wait and have the great wedding that we had originally planned, than to try to still go forward and have it be not the best it could be."
The two pushed back the date to July about a month ago, but didn't want their original wedding date to pass by without marking the occasion. They immediately considered a concert with Florida-based musician Zach Lovering.
"I think it was last weekend we were home and we were listening to one of his live-streamed concerts and my mom had the idea, 'Well, what if we asked him if he would play a show for us next weekend as a thing to look forward to?"
Johnson's parents met Lovering while vacationing in Key West a few months ago, prior to the pandemic. They loved his sound and style, and they continued following Lovering past their time in Key West.
"I’m all for it," said Lovering. "I’m always down to play, really anywhere."
Together, they are hoping to livestream the concert on Youtube. The platform's rules and regulations require 1,000 subscribers to livestream, and the family has been asking anyone to help their cause out.
"So kind of our goal for the past two weeks has been to reach out to everybody we know and have them talk to everyone they know, to try to get as many followers as we can so that he could do this live show for us on our supposed to be wedding day," said Johnson, who has dubbed the event the 'Biggest Wedding Reception that Never Happened.'
Johnson's mother, Kristen, was also recently diagnosed with a rare form of eye cancer, ocular melanoma. They ask anyone who feels compelled during the concert to donate to cancer research for this specific illness. If you would like to donate to the cause, you can find a link here.
"Kristen is just super positive throughout the whole thing. I don’t know if I’ve met anybody as positive in the last few years, and so I just feel really fortunate to have stumbled upon them and they have shown me so much love," said Lovering, describing what it felt like to have someone from afar support his music so much.
