Wedding Planning During COVID
As you know, COVID has put a pause on many things, but it shouldn’t have to put a pause on wedding planning. The good news is that you still can get married! Although, that might look a bit different than what you had originally envisioned. Below are just a few tips for planning your wedding during COVID.
Communication is so very important during wedding planning in general, but now even more so during COVID. Whether it’s with your vendors, the venue, your wedding planner, or guests, keeping communication lines open, honest, and frequent is one of the most important parts of the planning process right now. This will help ensure that no surprises arise. Updating your wedding website frequently and with the most up to date information is a great way to keep your guests informed. Word of mouth and frequent social media updates are also ideal. Most importantly, you’ll want to keep your guests informed of your upcoming wedding and what the status of that looks like as you may need to consider cutting down your guest list or making other changes to adhere to local regulations and guidelines.
No one knows when and if we will be able to gather in large numbers again, so if you find yourself in an issue where you already sent out invitations, but need to cut down your guest list, here are some ways to cut it down. First, send out an email, text message, or some type of survey to your guests to ask general questions about their comfort level with celebrating in groups, travel, if they have been exposed to COVID, etc. to be able to narrow down the list. After getting that list narrowed down, you can also create groups of people depending on family, extended family, close friends, coworkers, and whatever kinds of groups you would want. From there, choose the groups that would be deemed most important to you and the people in that. Have the top three or four groups be the ones that do get invited to your wedding. Those who do not get to come can always be sent a Zoom invite or can be invited to an informal celebration once larger groups are able to gather again. Trust us when we say your guests will understand regardless of what route you end up going here.
Brides! If you are doing a minimony or micro-wedding and then want to do an informal celebration later on, but you still want to wear that beautiful dress you found, go ahead and wear it both times! No one is going to judge you or think down on you for not buying two dresses. At the end of the day, no one expected this to happen, and no one expects you to have two completely different weddings and attire and decor and floral for both events. It’s okay to repeat things. Don’t let others tell you differently!
Make sure to read all contracts in-depth and ask your vendors any questions you may have. COVID is changing ways that many wedding professionals do their work and it’s important to work with them during these unprecedented times. Read through the contract and have honest communication with your vendors! They want to help you have the best wedding, but they also want to make sure they are doing right with their business as well. Be respectful to them as well.
Just remember, a wedding is a celebration of your love with your spouse. It’s not about the glitz and glam and wedding food. At the end of the day, if the two of you get to say “I do” that should be all that matters. Take a deep breath and remember the why behind the wedding.