covid Couples: How long were your vendors willing to "hold" your deposits?

Ours hasn't given us a deadline yet. On our booked date, they will have be holding it for 2.5 years.

View Quoted Comment That’s good to know - maybe there’s some hope for us. Sorry you’ve had to wait so long, though.

6-7 years is definitely a long time to hold a deposit!! Have you considered still having your November wedding and just downsizing the guest list if needed??

View Quoted Comment Nope. I’m not willing to downsize. Everyone on our guest list is there for a reason and there’s no way we could get it down to below even 75-100 without excluding close friends and family members who are critically important to us. If we have to start uninviting people, there won’t be a wedding.

Most vendors will not hold your deposits indefinitely - like 6-7 years is too long. Prices change, services change, booking systems change, standards change. Our vendors were willing to bump things out to the following year but not further than that (original date was in May 2020, moved to June 2021). Once the new year rolled around and things were still iffy, all were willing to honor the deposits further (second date change from June 2021 to possibly later in 2021 or in 2022) but not necessarily the same pricing. And of course if they didn't have availability on the new date we chose we would end up forfeiting the deposit.

Fortunately we were able to have our wedding celebration this June (after legally marrying last May), which seems to have been the best "window" since the start of Covid so far.

I really feel for you. We planned to start trying for a baby after our original May 2020 wedding but Covid and the celebration postponement threw a wrench into those plans. All this year was a balancing act between trying to actually have a wedding celebration and trying to start a family. We've now celebrated and struggled to TTC, so its been a very frustrating journey. We're in our mid-late 30s already and I feel like we lost a year due to Covid and now the timeframe to have a baby is so compressed. It just sucks.

Best thing to do is ask your vendors what options you have for postponing, refunds, and honoring your deposits. Our florist was willing to give us a "credit" for flowers (that we could have applied towards a baby shower or other event), and our venue/caterer originally was not going to refund us but when the Covid situation kept getting worse they did offer us a partial refund for services we hadn't yet used (they still charged us for some planning time and such, but we would have gotten a good chunk of our deposit back). You never know unless you ask.

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Yeah, that's all I'm hoping for is that some vendors will be willing to offer a "credit," i.e. "we'll count the money you've already paid toward a different event, assuming we are still in business when you decide to hold that event." I know prices will change drastically by the time we're willing to consider doing this again, but if they're still in business and we re-book with them, shouldn't they be willing to apply the money we already paid to the new balance? I'd even be OK with them counting a *portion* of what we already paid toward the new balance, since you have to factor in inflation as well. If they aren't willing to at least do that for us, then I suppose we are out all that money and we simply won't have a wedding at all.

I'm really sorry you've struggled TTC. :-( That is exactly what I'm afraid of. I'm 36, FH will turn 41 in October. We've done fertility testing which found no issues for either of us, but as I'm sure you know, those tests can't catch everything that could cause an issue. We'll hold off until November to see if we're able to have our wedding as planned, but if we can't, we are not waiting any longer.

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I FEEL you! My biggest worry with postponing was how it would impact us trying to start a family. We got married on our original date but postponed the celebration, and decided to hold off on TTC until the vaccines were available, so did not start as soon as we wanted but have been trying since the beginning of this year, shortly after my 35th birthday. Being married first was really important to us, so it was one of the reasons we didn't put off getting married even when we had to delay having a wedding. And while I really hoped to be able to have our celebration without worrying about babies or pregnancy at all, I just felt like we had already waited long enough. I absolutely did not want to very pregnant or immediately post-partum for our wedding, but figured maybe we'd conceive and have our celebration fall right after the first trimester, so we could use our wedding celebration to announce our pregnancy to our friends and family. Then when it was clear I wasn't pregnant, I was like "well at least I can drink at our wedding now and maybe we'll get lucky and get pregnant right after" but that hasn't yet happened either.

I've had so many friends who have really struggled, even when tests showed no clear issues for either partner, so I think about that often. We've been trying for 7 months now (so still well within the first year, but due to age, its recommended to see the doc after 6 months) so have both scheduled doctor's appointments this month (hubby, 38, went last week, I go this week). I have been tracking my BBT for several months and started doing OPK/LH testing as well, so our timing seems right, just no BFP yet. Having a biological child isn't tremendously important to us, and I absolutely don't want to go through IVF although we are willing to consider some less invasive interventions. Its still a complete emotional rollercoaster. I hate feeling so helpless and like I have no idea what is wrong. I keep trying to tell myself we are otherwise healthy and it just takes time and even younger couples can often take up to a year, so to be patient. But it feels like a very invisible struggle and weird thing to be going through, and I know all the stress I feel about Covid doesn't help but I can't exactly turn off the state of the world. Some days I feel like the whole future I felt so excited about and hopeful for when my husband and I got engaged doesn't even exist anymore. We never had the wedding we wanted (we did something and for that I am grateful), we have not been able to go on a dream honeymoon, and now having a baby hasn't gone smoothly yet. Plus upgrading our house seems impossible in this market. It's a lot.

I really hope you are able to have your wedding! It does sound like you have very realistic expectations of your vendors honoring your deposits and I think most will be willing to work with you. We intentionally picked all small, local businesses that shared similar values to us and all were were all super accommodating and supportive when Covid popped into the picture and postponing was obvious (for our initial date back in May 2020, businesses were shut down and legally not able to operate, so it was definitely out of all of our hands). Earlier this year, when we weren't sure June would happen, they were still all willing to work with us to find an alternative plan if it came down to it. Good luck!

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Ugh, I'm so sorry you are dealing with all of that. We are in the same boat minus the fertility struggles since we haven't started trying yet, so it's still an unknown. Our honeymoon is booked for the Cayman Islands, which were supposed to reopen to (vaccinated) U.S. leisure travelers by mid-Oct. Originally they were thinking they'd reopen this summer so it has already been pushed back, and now I am very skeptical that even the mid-Oct reopening is going to happen. We were going to leave Nov. 27, a week after our wedding, and start TTC right away. At this point I'm doubtful we'll get our big wedding OR our honeymoon, and I feel like what should have been some of the happiest and most exciting 2 years of my life have just been completely stolen from me. Fertility problems would just be the cherry on top. :-(

Part of me wishes everything would just shut down again soon so I could call it before we get any further, cancel the wedding, get legally married and start TTC. Sitting around for another few months waiting for a wedding and honeymoon that may not ever happen is such an awful feeling. But if there's still a chance of having the full wedding experience I always dreamed of - without risking being pregnant, maybe exhausted/sick and unable to drink at my own wedding - I'm just not ready to give up on that chance yet. So, we wait a little longer I guess.