love conquers all

AMBER CLAIRE HUDDLESTON & GRIFFIN LOUIS BROWN MAY 9, 2020 • WEST POINT

- KELLI BOZEMAN

Amber Claire Huddleston was only a couple of months away from earning her nursing degree when the pandemic hit. She was also only a couple of months away from another major life milestone: the day that she and her fiancé Griffin Brown were set to become husband and wife.

The couple, who met while both were students at Mississippi State University, had been planning their wedding for more than a year, ever since Griffin proposed to Amber Claire on the very spot on campus where they had attended a pop-up worship service together while on their first date two years earlier. But Amber Claire realized even in the earliest days of the spreading virus that COVID-19 could change everything. “The day before we were supposed to mail invitations, everything was shut down,” she recalls. “I was crushed.”

At first, the couple was unsure of how to proceed. Should they put off the wedding until the fall, when the COVID situation might be better? Amber Claire’s mother told her that whatever they opted to do, the family would make it a memorable day. “We decided that no matter the circumstances, we wanted to get married on the day we had been waiting and dreaming about, so my mom took that and ran with it,” Amber Claire says, adding that the uncertainty of the situation made it impossible to make any concrete preparations. “We had backup plans after backup plans.”