There will be six weddings in one day in Petrolia even if the venue has to change.

The Town of Petrolia decided to help out couples whose wedding plans had been marooned by the constantly changing restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It offered to hold seven civil wedding ceremonies in Bridgeview Park Saturday in a bid to outwit the pandemic.

Then Mother Nature said, hold my beer.

A line of heavy rain is moving into the area, forecast to bring up to four inches of rain over five days. And on Saturday, the forecast calls for severe thunderstorms.

Town Clerk, Mandi Pearson, who will be one of the officiants, said the town’s health and safety officer decided the ceremonies could not go on outside. While Pearson says they could deal with the rain, when the forecast changed to severe weather and the town didn’t want to “invite people to be lightening rods.”

Pearson says it “was considered too much of a logistical nightmare” to wait for Saturday morning before deciding if the ceremonies should move indoors.

So instead, the town will host the civil ceremonies in the lobby at Victoria Hall, maintaining COVID-19 protocols. If the weather permits, Pearson says, they can move outside to Victoria Park.

Pearson says the couples are okay with the move. “They’ve had to put everything off for so long that they just want to be able to be married and then have their party afterwards,” Pearson says.

And besides, she said, there was nothing the town could do about the weather.

“We try so hard to find silver linings, right? Like, it is so 2021 … it’s par for the course at this point.”