My Fiancé and I have already postponed from May 9th to October 4th for our 100 person wedding in upstate New York. Based on the guidelines we had been originally told we would be okay having about 85 people at our wedding because the venue while as 33% capacity would still be able to accommodate up to 218 people.
One of our other vendors said that this was not the correct guidelines to be following and gave us a law firm they had been working with to establish their own company policies. The lawyers now say that we can have 218 people for the ceremony since it is a religious event, but as soon as the ceremony is over if there are more than 50 people at the venue we would be out of compliance and subject to massive fines (as well as our vendors and the possibility of our venue losing their liquor license) since then it would be considered a private gathering. PLUS if we do cut our guest list down to just 50, the guidelines also state that there can be no standing or mingling unless actively going to use the restroom, go to the bar, or leave the event. Effectively stating that there is no dancing allowed, not even a first dance (however our DJ said he would make a special exception for our first dance for us, but would need to remind all other guests that they were not able to dance).
Not wanting to cause any harm to anyone's business I went back to our venue with the information to pass along and they replied that they will be following the 33% capacity guidelines they were given until the government tells him otherwise. All of our vendors seem to be okay with following the venue's rules except for one vendor who isn't too comfortable with it.
We are now trying to figure out if we should rescind our invitations we mailed, under the understanding of 218 people was the current max occupancy, to just have our immediate family (parents and siblings) and wedding party attend (about 35 people) or if we should postpone again until 2021?
If we do postpone, we would need to still get married on our original date as I lost my job in the pandemic and am running our of insurance coverage, so we would do something with the same 35 people on that day to make it official and then hold a reception next year, maybe with a vow renewal? Or we could just hold the ceremony and receptions as planned (just smaller and without dancing for the 35 people) and take the rest of the money we had been planning on spending on the wedding and put it towards our first house together.
Any advice out there?
