Non Big City Brides

Unless you are having a small wedding of entirely local guests and vendors, it's important to consider what is happening outside of your area as well. We are from a rural area with fewer than 50 cases in our entire county (many of which have recovered and are no longer active) and more than two hours from the closest major metropolitan area but still felt it was unsafe to have our small wedding because we had guests coming from outside the area and therefore have postponed by an entire year. December is still a ways off though and hopefully the entire country will be in much better shape by then!

I am from a very small town of 1200 people. Our county has 60000 people and has had 8 cases and each are better and no longer active. My wedding is 9/5/2020 I think we will be able to still have our wedding. I do think we might have to limit the guest county and possibly not have any guests from out of the state. I am in CA and our gov released his 4 stage plan in which he is allowing counties to apply to accelerate the stages if they meet certain criteria. (Which we do) We are currently in stage 2 and need to get to stage 3 which includes opening churches/weddings.

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CA bride here too! I'm getting married on 10/10/2020 in a rural CA county, (El Dorado county) and they got the green light to further open up into phase 2. I'm also inviting only about 40 people, so I'm being hopeful and staying positive that our weddings can still happen! The only thing I'm worried about is if guests still need to social distance, staying 6 ft apart and wearing face masks by this time...

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Hopefully it works out for you! I live in lake county which has about 1/3 of the population of El Dorado County. We moved in to phase 2 last Friday and they are drawing up plans to move in to phase three next week! We do have a guest count of 130 but I have a secondary list of only 50 people just in case.

I agree, I think that if the local area is opened up, a lot of local or driving distance guests will come. I know that my out of town guests will likely not come and that's understandable.

Where in North Carolina? I’m originally from Raleigh but I’m currently living in South Carolina. While they are definitely less cases both in my South Carolina county and a nearby small towns in the North Carolina mountains, they still have to follow the same restrictions that are being set by the state. I’m sure you know this, but North Carolina is opening up a little slower than surrounding states like Tennessee, Georgia, and South Carolina. The state is being very cautious. If there is a second wave, I could see them beginning to shut down again.


I sincerely hope that you were able to have the wedding of your dreams :-) My heart goes out to all the couples dealing with the added wedding stress during this difficult time.

I'm in central Virginia and shooting for a February wedding in 2021. My fiance and I have a guest list of just under 75 people. We are waiting on most things(including invites, at this point) but if it looks like there will be another wave we are going to have a micro wedding of just parents and siblings. Both families live in our local area so we feel fairly comfortable with that for now.

There are a few different components to this. I think it's entirely possible that some areas of some states will open up before others. Parts of rural NY are starting a slow opening tomorrow.

There's also a question of whether it's safe - if all of your guests are from the same small/rural area, I would feel better about that than being in an urban area, for sure.

I am a bride getting married in a small town (in SC), but all of our guests are travelling, so I'm undecided about what to do.

I agree that being outside of a major metropolitan area definitely helps, but it depends on so much more, like the guest list, vendors, etc. It's a complicated thing but I hope you get to have your wedding as planned!