It has not been easy, and I have been avoiding writing this update, but we made the difficult decision to postpone our wedding to 2021. It has been a way more emotional decision than I anticipated, I think for a number of reasons. First off, you put so much of your heart and soul into planning a wedding. I’ve spent countless hours combing over all the details, refining things here and there, taking notes on new ideas, sending emails… all the things. I’m one of those people who has dreamed about her wedding since she was a little girl, so to have to push it back is really hard. Additionally, this year has been a very difficult time for my family. We are a super close-knit bunch and my grandmother passed away at the beginning of May. This rocked my family to our core. We needed something happy and fun to look forward to, so taking that away from everyone has weighed heavily on my heart. But despite all the hard things life has thrown our way, we know that this postponement is the best call for everyone involved.
Our Reasoning
I’m sure there are people wondering why we would choose to make this call while we’re still four months out from the wedding, and I’m happy to explain our thinking for you, but the core of the issue is this: we are in the midst of a pandemic. We have no idea what’s going to happen. The healthy and safety of both ourselves and our loved ones is our absolute number one priority, and we aren’t willing to jeopardize that. We live and are getting married in Massachusetts. We’ve gotten hit pretty hard here and quite frankly, our outlook for October is not great. In our minds and those that we consulted before making this call, there was slim to no chance of us having the wedding we have planned in October of this year. Either in terms of number of guests, everyone wearing masks, etc. Having a small wedding, we really focused on the most important people in our lives. So, if someone were to not come purely because they did not feel safe, that would be really hard. On the other side of the coin, with everyone having to postpone their weddings, I wanted to make sure that we could get a date that we wanted and that would work for all of our vendors in 2021. It was a real fear that if we waited too long, we wouldn’t be able to keep the same team due to other bookings.
The Process
Any couples out there who are facing the same decisions may be wondering what the process of actually shifting was. I’m going to lay it out for you in hopes it will ease any stress or confusion you’re having on your end. Also, I recommend you check out our Facebook group… it’s specifically designed for couples facing issues with their weddings due to COVID-19. To help each other through this unprecedented process, to bounce ideas off of one another, and to ask questions. Anyway, the first thing I did was make a list. I love lists. My list included all the people I needed to contact. I broke it into sections.
Phase 1 was solely the venue. This is the first step when trying to reschedule a wedding because you need to see what dates your venue has available. No venue = nowhere to host a wedding. We are lucky that our venue is small and has a diverse revenue stream, with weddings seemingly being a smaller stream, so finding a new date and knowing that they will still be in business was not a fear or issue for us. Once I spoke with the venue, got a list of dates and confirmation that we could reschedule with no problems, I moved onto Phase 2: Vendors.
I wrote out a list of all the vendors I needed to shift and clear a new date with. This included Photography, Videography, DJ, and Hairstylist. Most people will need to include things like Florist and potentially Make Up Artist or Day-Of Coordinator here as well. Melissa (our Founder and Creative Director) is my florist, and she was our sounding board for whether or not we should be postponing, so she was already fully in the loop. My make up artist is my extremely talented sister, and my Day-Of Coordinator is included in the venue! I sent each vendor an email explaining the situation, sharing our goal date, and asking if this date did not work for them to please provide other options. Lucky for all, all vendors were clear for our goal date. As soon as I got the green light from all of them, I confirmed the new date with them all and received updated contracts. Then we move to Phase 3.
Phase 3 for me included things like room block reservations, rehearsal dinner reservations, and dress fittings. My first dress fitting was scheduled for July. I decided that I don’t want to go through that process twice, so I’m going to hold off until next summer so I only need to work through the process once. With room blocks, you need to make sure you have a clear plan in place for those guests who have already booked. For example, our venue stated that anyone who had currently booked in the room block would automatically be shifted to the new 2021 dates. Be clear on what responsibility will fall on the guests who have already booked their accommodations. And communicate that with them! We reached out to each person who had booked a room in that block and explained the situation to them. The more you can do to minimize the burden to your guests and the questions/opening for confusion, the better.
I call this next section Phase 3.5, because it can be done in parallel to Phase 3, but it’s a separate set of tasks. Once phases 1 and 2 were complete, I knew I could order our “Change the Date” cards. I did some research on what I liked for wording and sent it off to our designer, the incredibly talented Art Director here at Parsimony, Dave Buscemi. In a matter of hours, we had proofs to approve which were then ordered to be printed. Also in Phase 3.5 was to update our wedding website. I wanted to get the ball rolling on this one in case anyone was randomly looking at it now (highly unlikely, yes, but I’m a planner, so I like to get things done ASAP). I updated the landing page with a statement regarding the postponement and to keep checking back as we will be updating the site as changes develop. I updated our Details page to reflect the new wedding date, and updated our Room Block information as I received it. I just want to make sure that I note here — you do not need to have all your ducks in a line to start this process. Literally one of my room blocks is listed as “TBD” because I haven’t confirmed those details yet. In my mind, it’s an easy way to keep updating your guests all at once.
What Now?
10/10/2020 has been my dream wedding date for two years at this point. While we are so beyond excited to celebrate with everyone in 2021, we just don’t want to wait that long! So we’re planning to do a small elopement ceremony with just our parents and siblings on our original date to keep our anniversary. We got engaged on 10/10, we want to get married on 10/10. It’s going to be strange not to have our whole crew with us for that day, but we know it’s what we want to do. And we can’t wait to do the whole thing all over again next year!
