St. Pius couple rushes to get married on ‘surreal’ day

On Saturday, March 21, Paul Schiller called Father Jim Walsh with a question: Could he marry him and his fiancee by 8 p.m., tomorrow?

“That was a first,” said Father Wash, pastor at St. Pius X Church in Loudonville. “I checked my book and I was free.”

On Sunday, March 22, Paul Schiller and Kathleen Hensel had their “perfectly imperfect wedding” (as Hensel would say) in the chapel of St. Pius, surrounded by five close friends and family, Father Walsh and one photographer.

“It was all kind of surreal,” Schiller said. “We never expected to be getting married within hours of saying, ‘Okay we’ve got to get married now or who knows when.’”

While slightly unscheduled, the wedding wasn’t completely impromptu. The couple had been set to marry at their parish, St. Pius, on March 28. But when the COVID-19 coronavirus erupted, large group gatherings were becoming more and more restricted.

In early March, the two began to worry that their original wedding date wasn’t going to happen. “Things were changing so rapidly we just weren’t even sure,” said Hensel.

Then the cancellations started coming in: Bellini’s in Latham canceled the couple’s reception party for safety measures, then The Gideon Putnam in Saratoga canceled their after party as well. The Park City Mountain Resort in Utah, where the couple was to spend their honeymoon, started closing down, so they canceled their airline and rental car.

“It all seemed like it was falling apart,” Schiller said.

Then on Friday, March 20, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced the “New York State on PAUSE” executive order, directing all non-essential businesses statewide to close and temporarily banning all non-essential gatherings of any size for any reason. The directive was to go into effect by that Sunday, March 22, at 8 p.m.

“This came to our attention on Friday night,” Hensel said. “So Saturday morning Paul called Father Walsh to talk to him about the latest press release and see if it was at all possible to bump up the wedding so we could get married by that deadline by 8 p.m., and he was able to do it!”

While different than expected, the couple agrees it happened just like it should have.

“I thought if (Father Walsh) cannot marry us for whatever the reason, it was meant that our marriage needed to wait,” Hensel added. “I thought God’s will, not mine, be done, so I guess it was our time to get married, and under the gun no doubt by 8 o’clock!”

Both from the Diocese of Albany, Schiller and Hensel met at a mutual friend’s Fourth of July party nine years ago. They maintained a friendship over the years, until 2018 when Schiller asked Hensel to attend his daught­er’s wed­ding with him. The two began dating and they got engaged in November 2019.

After moving up the wedding, it was difficult for some family members to come on such short notice. Schiller is father to five children from a previous marriage, and Hensel has nine brothers and sisters. They understood it was a big ask to accommodate the quick change, but Hensel hopes that “down the road, hopefully, we’ll have a nice party” to celebrate the day together.

“We’re an older couple,” added Hensel, “so for us to postpone without an end date possible in sight, we just thought let’s just go ahead.”

Hensel’s two sisters were her matrons of honor, and also attending were her brother-in-law and two close friends of the couple from St. Pius. “And of course we wanted a photographer for proof!” Hensel laughed.

After the ceremony, a couple from their parish surprised the two by standing outside blowing bubbles through a bubble wand. “It was really sweet,” Hensel said. “I called all my guests and some were parishioners at St. Pius and informed them of the update, and lo and behold, they had a little special something for us as we came out of the church.”

And after the big day, the honeymooners went home and cooked dinner, just like any other Sunday. “I created a nice honeymoon suite and we’ve been here ever since,” Hensel said. “It was really intimate; it was quite special. And the reason why we got married didn’t change just because everything else did.”