Illinois Brides! Let’s be friends!

View Quoted Comment I’m so back and forth between excited/panicked/depressed!! I don’t even know how my body is able to process all of these feelings all the time, this is probably really bad for me.
Are your bridesmaids being supportive at least? I just have two, and my MOH (my sister!) doesn’t even text me back anymore if I talk about the wedding. People just have so much of their own stuff going on now, I feel like I can’t talk about this wedding with anyone.
I totally identify with worrying about the number of guests. I am pretty confident that IL will loosen up the restrictions and allow 50, but I’m afraid no one will come!!! We were planning to have a small wedding of about 50 even before the pandemic, but I know we definitely could not cut down our guest list to less than 40.

Happy New Year! Illinois bride here as well. We’ll be getting married on 7/17/21 in downtown Chicago at the Harold Washington Public Library. We made sure the venue and all of our vendors have a COVID clause so we’ll be able to either reschedule or get our money back if we have to cancel due to COVID. I haven’t been super nervous about it all but my fiancé has been as most of his family will be traveling from Tennessee and California. I’ve also looked into elopement ideas as well as micro weddings with just our closest friends and family. I’m hoping restrictions lift but also making contingency plans in case they don’t. Saying all the prayers, crossing all my fingers and hoping for the best!

View Quoted Comment We are technically supposed to be in the final phase of reopening with no limits on gatherings now, because there is a vaccine! Restore Illinois is pretty vague though and Pritzker has gone rogue. I wish our leaders could be a little more transparent with us about what’s happening and what the plans are! But I do think we’ll find out in like 2 weeks, since JB is watching out for that holiday surge. Some restrictions could be gone soon? I’m both nauseous with panic and hopeful for a miracle at the same time, I don’t know how my brain hasn’t exploded yet.

View Quoted Comment I’m having 2 bridesmaids and 1 MOH thankfully they’re supportive. I know it’s hard but we have to try not to feel so stressed out like you said it’s not good for us. Have you sent out save the dates?

Hello!


We're getting married on 4/3/21 in Chicago. So far so good 👍🏽. I asked my venue if I can expect to be invite all my guests and they said yes. Of course, I wish COVID wasn't happening but it is so I rather have a positive mind for myself than to feel "ugh" about it because I'm marrying my partner no matter what. Good luck! And who else gets to say that they got married during a pandemic 😆

View Quoted Comment We sent our save the dates and I feel like I should send the formal invites sooner rather than later but also want people to have more information before making a decision on whether they’re coming or not. I’m struggling with when to send invites.

View Quoted Comment We sent out Save the Dates for our October wedding last year, and then that got cancelled! Our planner has recommended we not send out Save the dates this time for May, because we don’t know for sure how many people we’ll be able to have. All of our guests know when the wedding is though and we’re keeping them all posted, so they’re already saving the date. We’re just hoping for 50 people!!

View Quoted Comment I LOVE your positive attitude about this! I need to steal some of those good vibes!! Haha

View Quoted Comment I know what you mean!!
I am worried about the out of town guests (mostly NYC) having enough time to make travel plans, but we do have a hotel block reserved and there are always plenty of cheap flights options from NYC to Chicago.
And I think a lot of people aren’t making too many plans right now with the pandemic, so maybe we don’t have to worry about people being busy and not being able to come?! I don’t know, these are the thoughts I’ve been trying to reassure myself with as I have been slowly losing my mind for the past 9.5ish months 😂

View Quoted Comment I haven’t sent out save the dates I keep debating I’m like are people going to be thinking like what’s wrong with her we are in the middle of a pandemic and she’s thinking of her wedding 😩

View Quoted Comment That’s why I been iffy on sending save the dates out since I really don’t know what’s going to happen

View Quoted Comment THAT’S HOW I FEEL TOO!! Our wedding is in May which isn’t for 4ish months and I am hopeful things will be better by then, but I CANNOT imagine putting invitations in the mail soon!!! Especially with a photo of us smiling and looking blissful and carefree on it. I will feel really uncomfortable sending out invites if the numbers don’t majorly improve!! I’ve just been keeping all of our close family and friends updated by text.

View Quoted Comment Also a wheeling bride! Are you by chance at Chevy Chase? Our original date was 9/6/20 (we still got married this day at a very small ceremony with just immediate family) and now pushed back to 7/11/21. Keeping our fingers crossed! 🤞

View Quoted Comment I thought that too but I’ve received so much love and no negative reactions! I will say we texted and emailed the save the dates and added a note that it’s all tentative pending all things COVID. We had so many people saying they were excited that we weren’t letting COVID stop our planning. I’m sure some folks rolled their eyes, ha, but most were very kind and thoughtful!

Hi! I have been engaged since May 2019 and we thought we were in the clear for our Illinois wedding on 4/3/21, but we made the decision this week to push it off for a year 😔 but I'm kind of relieved to have more time to plan!

View Quoted Comment I think I’m just going to start into getting them soon and just send them out

View Quoted Comment We are at Chevy Chase! Did you get married there on 9/6? We were going to switch to their sister venue, Rob Roy, on 9/6, but ultimately decided to push again to 2021 back to Chevy Chase in the Devonshire room.

Hi, I'm from Rural Central Illinois, and our wedding is in May of this year. We've been in the process of planning our wedding for the past 2 years so it's been kind of stressful to continue planning, especially since you aren't sure if you'll be able to have 50 or even 10 people at the wedding. One thing that we are doing for our wedding is to make a live stream for our wedding so that we can still have others be a part of our wedding day. One of my friends did this for her wedding she had in Fall 2020 and it was a great alternative. We were also already planning on having a videographer for the wedding so we are also going to share that video with friends and family that cannot attend in-person as well. The pandemic has definitely not made it easy and has definitely added more stress to the wedding planning process

View Quoted Comment That makes sense! I was reading an article that gave suggestions on how to politely uninvite people if you have to downsize because of COVID. It was helpful. I think people will under but I’m sure that won’t be the case for everyone. It definitely helps that the people are saving the date anyway!! I’m really not sure why I’m so calm about it all because I’m an expert at stressing lol but I really am excited to marry him and that’s al that matters. We will do our best to include al if our loved ones and hope people understand! It’s strange times and I’m banking on people giving us grace as we figure it out.

View Quoted Comment I think that makes sense. People have been understanding and I’d rather them know the tentative date than not.