COVID-19 & Your Wedding Day

Things to consider during this international crisis…Download a FREE copy of this post at the bottom of this page!

This worldwide virus is affecting everyone, their daily lives, their businesses, and their planned events! Quarantine’s are set in place in an effort to stop the spread and we are seeing major shutdowns/lockdowns in our cities and even states. And we don’t know how long it will last. AND you’re getting married soon...What do you do?

I’m here to offer little tid bits of advice and encouragement to those of you faced with having to make some serious decisions about your wedding day. Do you postpone? Do you cancel? Do you proceed as planned? And while I cannot fully answer those questions for you, here are some things to consider and think about.

As of March 15th, it was recommended by the CDC that events over 50 people should not move forward (and in some cases that number has even gone down to 10 or more people).

How many of your guests will have to travel to attend your wedding? Some travel is limited right now, so this could impact your guests being able to make it to the celebration. Are there elderly or loved ones with pre-existing health conditions on your guest list? Should they stay home? Reports are showing that the individuals with the most risk are the elderly and those with pre-existing health conditions, such as autoimmune diseases, asthma, etc.

Do you have a guest list of over 50 attendees? Because of the recommendations made by the CDC, you may want to consider a contingency plan if you wish to have more than 50 guests at your wedding. Here are a few plans you could consider:

PLAN A: This is the ideal plan, you proceed as you’ve planned already and either 1) hope that the pandemic is over before your wedding date or 2) you have an intimate guest list of 50 or less individuals.

PLAN B: Contact your guests and figure out how many would be able to attend given the circumstances. If your re-evaluated numbers end up less than 50 people, you could potentially proceed. Another option would be to have a small intimate wedding ceremony and then reschedule the big celebration at a later date after the pandemic is over.

PLAN C: Postpone everything until you’re able to move forward with your dream wedding.

So now let’s talk about the worst-case scenario, PLAN C. You have to postpone to a later date. What do you do? Here are a few steps:

1. Contact your venue. Discuss the situation with them, look at possible other dates they have available later in the year or the following year.

2. Contact your photographer to check the new dates available from your dream venue.

3. Contact all other wedding vendors, explain the situation. Check through all your contracts, see if you can reschedule them all for the new date. If you can’t reschedule them, work through your agreement contracts for the best possible solution!

4. Alert all your guests! Whether this be through a text message, social media post, or a mailed card; get the message to all your guests and inform them of the new date and that more details would follow. Unfortunately, you would probably have to send out another invitation.

5. Breath. It’s going to be ok. There are people there to help you and know that you are not alone in this. There are support groups out there that you can obtain advice from. If you have questions, reach out and ask!

I hope this was helpful to you if you have any other questions please reach out to me and I’d be happy to help as much as I can! Stay safe out there, use common sense, trust that “gut feeling”, and remember to breathe. It’ll be ok!

Hugs! -Jen

P.S. Don’t forget to grab your copy of this blog post as a PDF, just click below!