As a wedding planner, a bride, and a public health professional, I wanted to provide a unique perspective on having to change plans in the midst of a pandemic. My now husband and I were engaged in October 2019 and had discussed getting married in Fall 2020. By March 2020, we already had a date, venue, all of my vendors, and I had already made a trip to India to buy all of our wedding outfits. My original wedding plan included a welcome event, a wedding ceremony, cocktail hour, and reception for 275 guests. I thought being a wedding planner was going to help me get through the year since I have had plenty of experience with planning details, staying organized, and anticipating wedding planning related issues. We were feeling great until all of the uncertainty about COVID-19 began to overwhelm us.
From the public health standpoint, we felt responsible for our guests’ health. We knew almost immediately that we would be uncomfortable putting all of our loved ones in a room together exposed to potential harm so we decided to move the wedding to Spring 2021. I had never really had an ideal wedding planned but I loved the idea of a Fall wedding and I just wanted a day where everyone we loved could be in a room together having an amazing. I had to let go of those notions pretty quickly. There were many times I would feel annoyed, disappointed, and even irritated about the difficulty and frustrating of all of the changes I was being ‘forced’ to make, but as our clients were going through the same frustrations and fears, it was pacifying knowing that this was not just happening to me; it was happening to the entire world.
The process of rescheduling the wedding was intense. I first spoke with my venues to find a new 2021 weekend that was available. Then I was able to get in contact with each of my vendors to discuss their availability for the new date. I had decided to keep the event details exactly the same so luckily, I did not have to renegotiate the contracts.
As we entered August 2020, I was beginning to feel uncertain about my new Spring 2021 date. Georgia is technically open and there have been events successfully executed with social distancing and other COVID-19 regulations in place. However from a public health perspective, I knew flu season was upon us, some schools and colleges were planning on opening up, and there were discussions about a second wave of cases.
For many years, I had said I wanted to secretly get legally married before the big wedding day (Jim and Pam style for my The Office loving readers) so I threw out the idea of getting legally married in our backyard on our six year anniversary which happened to be the third weekend of September. We decided to keep our guest count at 25 which included the two of us, the photographer, and the officiant who was also a very close friend of ours. We also chose to not invite older adults including our parents which was a tough decision but this was the only way to ensure that they would be safe.
Knowing that we communicated as much information as possible to our guests and took all of the precautionary measures that we could think of, we were able to relax enough the day of the wedding. We also followed up with guests the day after the wedding to request that they send us a message if they had COVID-19 symptoms or tested positive within 14 days of the event. It is now safe to say we successfully executed a COVID-19 wedding!
It felt like the most magical day and the best thing that has happened to us in 2020; I would do it all over again.
Next week I’ll be going into the specifics of planning by answering (with firsthand experience) some of the questions that we are frequently asked!
