Please help me word this vaccine faq

"We kindly request that all guests are vaccinated prior to attending the event in consideration of others. If you are not yet vaccinated, please click this link to find vaccinate availability near you."

View Quoted Comment This is perfect!

I would actually take the phrase from the text you posted... "We encourage all guests...". I have a lot of people around me that are really against the vaccination and don't intend to do it at all. So they have to come tested. What's more, they require from vaccinated guests to be tested too !!! Here in France the government is having a hard time "forcing" the nation to get vaccinated, I think if the people heard that it's required by bride and groom, they would be on strike right away

Do you know if any of your friends and family are not vaccinated already? In the US, vaccines have been available for awhile and I doubt anyone who isn’t vaccinated already would do it for a wedding. I think it’s 100% reasonable to require vaccines for a private event like a wedding but people may decline for this reason. 😞


In terms of your wording, I think it’s a little confusing what is required. Maybe leave out the second sentence and just say it’s strongly recommended ?
Personally, I’m giving guests the option to take a covid test ahead of my wedding if they aren’t vaccinated and explicitly stated on my website that either a vaccine or a negative test is required to attend so that there’s no confusion! All of my guests, including unvaccinated have been fine with this.

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Agreed with this.

It says "please be vaccinated" without saying "we are requiring vaccination."

Also, saying "we don't require proof" just undermines your intentions, in my opinion. This suggested wording leaves that ambiguous.

You might have guests call and ask you if you're requiring proof, at which point you can say no and again stress that it is important to you that people are vaccinated.

My FH & I opted for a direct, personal appeal. We made it very clear that we want everyone to be vaccinated, so if you choose to come & aren’t you are directly going against our wishes. I’ve included what we wrote below (& I realize we need to update the mask policy given the new CDC guidance!). :

We ask that everyone attending our wedding be vaccinated, unless you are medically unable to do so. If you have not yet been vaccinated, please check your state's website or use the VaccineFinder tool, linked below, to find vaccine availability near you.

Masks should be worn by all unvaccinated individuals when inside both the church & reception venues, as specified by the CDC and our state. Masks are required for everyone on all forms of public transportation, including shared rides.

Thank you for helping us make our wedding safe and enjoyable for everyone!

Honestly, I like your wording more than any of the suggestions here. The people left who aren’t vaccinated are the ones who aren’t going to respond to any kind of wording that makes it sound like you are trying to compel them to get a vaccine or like you don’t respect their right to make their own choice, and I think that all of the suggestions so far come off that way. If you want, maybe you could add a quick heartfelt sentence about why you’d love it if everyone was vaccinated (you’d like the peace of mind knowing everyone you love will be safe, etc). But don’t make it too long or people won’t read the whole thing. I agree that if you aren’t going to tie admittance to vaccination status, there’s no point in wording it as if you are.

I’d just delete the line that there’s no enforcement or checking. Straight from
Strongly recommend to encourage. If you don’t want to require vaccinations another option is to ask all guests to either be vaccinated OR have a negative Covid test before the event. I recently went to a wedding that did this. As far as I know it was all honor system , but they asked that any non vaccinated guest get tested within 72 hours of the event and only attend if they were negative. This wording worked well for me as a cautious vaccinated person, and I felt comfortable attending the event. On the flipside I just got an invite for an event that explicitly said they will not be asking guests to be vaccinated nor take a test….and that one, I would not be comfortable attending

My husband and I got married June 4 and also wanted vaccinated and or covid tested guests to attend. Which in NYC at the time was already a requirement until rates went down and vaccinations went up and our governor made the policy only for 100 guests or more weddings which we did not qualify for since we had a 50 person wedding. My venue told us they could no longer require testing, proof of vaccination status or negative covid results since the new mandate. My husband and I still wanted to enforce this and feared if it wasn’t a mandate no one would do it. We did not want to have a super spreader wedding or harm our loved ones at our wedding so my mother suggested having guests submit their tests and vaccination status to a link. I found that Dropbox allows you to set up a link to have documents uploaded to and this worked for us. Our guests already knew months in advance we were not playing games or taking any unnecessary risks with our wedding. Unlike our state that was moving too quickly with reopening and going to 100% capacity and changing masks mandates we knew things could always change (hence delta variant less than 2 months after our wedding.) we relayed this info on our website, a safety letter and a group texting app that allowed us to send one universal message to our wedding guest group but deliver it individually. We also paid to have the doctor our venue used to perform onsite testing. (For larger 100p weddings it was free since it was a mandate). We had no problems getting guests to cooperate which I was very surprised it honestly warmed my heart that everyone wanted to do their part to be safe and keep others safe and attend comfortably. All I wanted was to have a safe and fun wedding and we did. No one used our on-site testing and did testing beforehand but that was fine. We just wanted guests to know it was an option in case they forgot or their results got delayed.

This is how we addressed testing and vaccination in our letter: Testing/Quarantine: As of March 15, 2021, COVID-19 testing or proof of COVID vaccination has

become a requirement to attend NYC weddings. In the event that this mandate changes, please know

it is still required for attendance at our wedding. Our goal is to have a safe, responsible and fun

wedding. A negative test result upon arrival to the venue will be required to attend. Those who have

received their COVID vaccination will need to show proof of vaccination and must be 14 days post

vaccination (both doses), or take a COVID test if it has not been 14 days. However, if you have been

vaccinated, but have had a known exposure recently to COVID-19, then we highly recommend you

get tested as well regardless of your vaccination status. Current guidelines states everyone must

have proof of a negative PCR test (if not vaccinated) within 72 hours before the wedding(3

days), or a rapid test done within six hours of the wedding (between the hours of 10am -4pm).

This will give you and everyone in attendance a peace of mind knowing everyone is doing their part

to be safe and keep others safe. The venue staff do daily testing and screening

If you are not going to require proof of vaccination, then I would definitely go with what Holly above, wrote. It's to the point and doesn't leave room for questions. I personally don't trust the "honor system" even with members of my extended family so you definitely don't want to make that known BEFORE the day of. Maybe add a deeply personal line about how you love everyone and would hate for your wedding - which is supposed to be a celebration - leading to a tragedy down the line.

We are going to be checking proof at the door or ahead of time for our wedding - we have a pretty large guest list and we just don't want to take chances. I added this to the end of the requirement "We understand that everyone has the freedom to make their own decision regarding their health. If you cannot attend for this reason, we totally understand."

Best of luck

Absolutely ridiculous if you ask everybody to get a shot I think you should go get married somewhere by yourself so you won’t have to worry about that and if anybody told me that it was mandatory to get shots for me to go to their wedding I would say well have a nice wedding I’m not going

I would just do what Holly said however I wouldn't make a big deal out of it,

View Quoted Comment That's fine. If you're scared of a shot you can stay home.

I think it's okay to not enforce it really but I wouldn't really mention it. People have already shown they can't follow the honor system.

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And that's OK, you have every right to stay home.

I agree I like Holly’s, & may update ours to be more like it!

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This. You can't have something that says "vaccines aren't required" if you actually want everyone to be vaccinated.

We requested/expected all guests to be vaccinated prior to our event (never once did we use the word required). I sent an email to all of our guests well in advance, giving everyone ample time to make sure they registered for vaccination when it became available, and included information about vaccines, how to find a vaccination opportunity near them, etc. We also put all of this information on our website and had a special "Covid Safety" page for guests.

We used online RSVP through our wedding website, and guests had to make a meal selection as well as confirm their vaccination status in order to RSVP. We had a few guests who just declined to read my email or our wedding website and who RSVP'd yes to our wedding but then answered that "no" they would not be fully vaccinated in time for our wedding, one of which was a groomsmen. My husband had to call those guests to discuss vaccination (they were "his" friends), verify that it was a personal choice (not a legitimate medical reason backed by their doctors), and let them know that we would be removing them from our event. All those conversations went absolutely fine, btw, and the people who declined to be vaccinated and not attend our wedding all understood and respected our stance. We also had a few guests who only felt safe attending because they knew everyone was vaccinated.

We never asked people to show proof of their vaccination card, but asking them to confirm their vaccination status as part of the RSVP was an important step. Had we not done that a few unvaccinated people would have slipped through the cracks and endangered the high risk guests at our wedding. We had a small wedding (47 guests attended) so people we were close to and trusted, so felt comfortable relying on their word. By having it be part of the RSVP, we had documented proof of their "claim" so if we later found out they hadn't been vaccinated, it would have been very clear that they outright lied to us and tried to deceive us, vs it just being a misunderstanding.

In my honest opinion if you are sticky with the wording, I would say ask your guests to wear a masks instead. Because if you aren't asking for proof then its a bit weird to prefer them to be vaccinated vs. not. I would ask guests to wear masks during the wedding regardless of vaccination status so that no one is picking/choosing to say or not say they are vaccinated. It will also be easier on you and make you and other guests feel more relaxed and relieved walking around the venue and having to wonder if a person is saying they are vaccinated or not. And you may have those true people who wear their mask unvaccinated but not all people do. Either way it may cut the guest list down a bit.

View Quoted Comment Same. I think the idea of requiring a vaccine is a bit much but to each their own.