Hello all!! I'm pretty new here, first time posting. Warning, this become a long winded post. Was just curious how all of you are handling all of the unknowns of wedding planning during the coronavirus pandemic?? Are you running into issues that under normal circumstances would not be there?
My fiance and I were engaged on 6/6/20 and quickly decided on a wedding date of 6/12/21. Both of us have been married previously but neither have ever had a honeymoon. We agreed right away that we wanted to put the majority of our money towards a super nice honeymoon rather than on the ceremony itself. Please don't judge, but I am not one of those girls that needs or even likes all of the attention on me and in my personal opinion traditional wedding ceremonies are more for the guests than the bride and groom. We wanted a ceremony that represents US... who WE are as a couple and not the typical venue and ceremony. We intended on planning what WE wanted rather than what we felt everyone else would expect. We decided on a large pavilion at our favorite campground on the lake. Plenty of parking, beautiful views all around, plenty of space, close to the beach, playground and restrooms. Well, we set the date and decided on a location and contacted the campground hosts directly only to be informed that they were not allowed to reserve the pavilion until the restrictions due to Covid 19 were lifted. The campground is open.... which we already knew because we camp almost every other weekend or so but the pavilion cannot be reserved until further notice. Not even a year in advance. SMH. So, we decided that we do have a year after all and decided to just wait it out until we could reserve. We proceeded to book our honeymoon at Sandals resort in Jamaica after LOTS of research and with the help our of travel agent friend that is more than delighted to be a part of helping us.
Here we are almost 2 months later and this pandemic continues. I watch the campground website religiously and no change. I have began to stress that we either won't be able to reserve the site we want at all or if it reopens it will not be until last minute at this point. I spoke with the campground again earlier today and was informed that there has been no talk whatsoever of reopening the common areas the rest of this "season". (the site campground closes at the end of October and reopens end of Feb or beginning of March) Now my concern is that I can't even begin to plan or purchase items as I have no clue what is going to happen.
My fiance and I are now tossing around other venue options, but none are exactly what we want or cost above and beyond what we would like to spend on the ceremony. We were talking a night or two ago about the honeymoon and I brought to his attention that Sandals offers free weddings with minimum 3 night bookings and our booking is for 6 nights. I pulled up the site and showed him everything it included. For us, this option would be more like eloping as none of our family would be able to go. I am fine with that, I know that our family and friends would love to be part of our wedding day but I suggested that if we went with this option that we could come back and OPTION 1: have a large reception at our home. We have a large yard and we love to entertain. It would be less formal but would really be us doing what we like to do. Or OPTION 2: Reserve the pavilion if it is open and several campsites like we were going to do but just do the reception. A LOT less pressure than trying to plan a wedding ceremony if we can't reserve it as far in advance as we need to. Either way, all ceremony details are already taken care of with the Sandals wedding. I feel that takes a lot of pressure off of us during these uncertain times and our family and friends can still be a part of celebrating our marriage. We can still have speeches, dances, etc so the things that my fiance was really not wanting me to miss out on won't be missing. (my previous wedding experience was NOT anything that I truly wanted...... long story)
With all of that being said.... what are some of your thoughts/opinions/advice? Is anyone else struggling with the fact that you can't really plan and coordinate normally right now????
