by Kyle Herschelman

In their training, Marines are taught to “Improvise, Adapt, and Overcome”, a mindset that allows the Marines to deal with any physical, mental or spiritual hardship.

For Litchfield High School grads Adam Fischer and Victoria Quarton, that thought process came in handy as the two approached their wedding day. With Adam, a captain in the Marines, stationed at Camp Pendleton near San Diego and Victoria working as a nurse in Springfield, planning for the big day on May 30 was already a little challenging, but when the coronavirus entered the picture in March, challenging took on a whole other level.

“We pretty much had all of the big things out of the way pretty quick,” said Victoria, who got engaged in February and needed to help plan a ceremony before Adam’s deployment to Okinawa in November. “Then March was the month that everything started to progress with the precautions for the coronavirus. We were just trying to have faith that everything was going to work out.”

COVID-19 chipped away at that faith over the following weeks as the calendar flipped over to April and the wedding date got closer. In addition to the restrictions in Illinois, all military personnel was under a no move order, meaning that Adam couldn’t be further than 30 miles from his base.

“We had a discussion one weekend in April. I had created a Facebook page for all of our family and friends that we were going to invite, but I hadn’t sent out invitations and it was getting close to being a month from the wedding,” Victoria explained. 

“Adam said that even if we did have the wedding, it wasn’t safe to get all of our friends and family together. We had our grandparents and others that were over 65 that we would be putting at a huge risk. So even if we could have had it, we knew it was the right decision to cancel it.”

As it turns out, the point was moot as a few days later, the military extended the no move order from May 11 to June 30.

But in true Marine fashion, the couple began to improvise and adapt. With courthouses closed at the time, Adam went online to look for other options to get the nuptials underway.

“Adam was doing some research and found out that the State of Montana does double proxy marriages for people in the military and other situations,” Victoria said of one of the options. “They would have had a ceremony for us with neither of us being there, so we could legally be married. It’s something they’ve been doing since the 1800s I think. I’d never heard of it. It would have been $750, but at the time, it was our only option to be legally married.”

Fortunately courthouses began to open up and Adam’s mother, Amy Fischer, found out that the courthouse in San Diego would be open for marriages in May. From there, things really sped up.

Victoria had already put in her four-week notice with St. John’s Hospital and worked her last shift in the cardiac unit on May 2. With the help of a military wife friend who came to Illinois from California, Victoria packed up her apartment and headed west for a three-day road trip to finally be with her future husband.

“Adam’s family was going to help me move, but Adam didn’t want them traveling across the country,” Victoria said as the pandemic precautions were still in full effect at the time. “Our whole way to California, we would disinfect everything we touched, just trying to be safe. It was insane.”

Before heading to California, Victoria had one last night in Illinois, which she spent with her family. It was a bittersweet send-off, knowing that neither family would be able to attend the wedding in person.

Both Adam and Victoria come from big families. Amy and Andy Fischer have three other children, Andrea, Alex and Audrey, while Victoria’s parents, Brian and Lori, have four children as well, with Alexandria, Caroline and Camden the three youngest of the crew.

“My last night at home, Adam’s mom came over just to visit a little bit. She started crying, so I asked, ‘Would you like me to try on my wedding dress?’” Victoria remembered. “So I tried on my wedding dress and showed it to my parents, my siblings and Adam’s mom. We were all just crying. It was just so sad. But it’s happy sad. I’m happy that I married my best friend and we’re going to be starting our lives together, but it’s also sad because my mom and I have dreamed about my wedding since I was a little girl. To have it taken away from us was really hard.”

The emotions continued into the next morning as Victoria went on one last run with her father before hitting the road.

“We were aiming to leave around 8 a.m., so my dad and I got up at 6 a.m. to do our four-mile loop,” explained Victoria, who ran at Litchfield and Eastern Illinois University. “At one point during the run, we were both crying while looking back on all the time we spent together running those roads.”

While her dream wedding may not have been at the San Diego County Clerk’s office, who converted an empty concession stand outside the office into a “marriage hut”, the new Mrs. Victoria Fischer knows the most important part was that the couple were able to get married at all.

“The goal throughout all of this was just to get married,” said Victoria, who said “I do” on Friday, May 8. “When we were planning everything I didn’t care about the little details, because I just wanted us to get married, so the fact that we were able to was just a huge blessing.”

The Marine slogan will continue though for the Fischers as they will only have a few short months together before Adam leaves for Japan with squadron HMLA-267, where he will be piloting the Cobra helicopter. Victoria is currently waiting on her California nursing license, a process she started in January, while also settling into married life with Adam in Carlsbad, CA.

“Adam said it’s just the beginning of military life,” Victoria said of the craziness involving their journey to marriage. “You never know what to expect. As it was all happening, we said that this will be a great story for our children and grandchildren in the future.”

The couple is hoping to have a celebration for friends and family back in Litchfield once Adam’s deployment is complete in May 2021, right around their first wedding anniversary. Adam’s father was designing and building the couple a special wedding arbor for May 30, with the couple’s initials on the side, and while that big day was cancelled, the work on the arbor continued and is ready for the celebration when the Fischers return to Illinois.

While those six months away could be tough for the young couple, they are already battle tested just getting to this point.

“It’s funny, we had just decided to be in a relationship and he was deployed a month later. I didn’t see him for six months,” Victoria said with a laugh. “Distance has definitely played a role in our relationship.”

They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder, but in the Fischers’ case, another Marine motto may be more apt: Semper Fidelis or in English, “Always Faithful.”