To surrender to Covid or hold on....?

November bride here. We are waiting until September 1st to make a decision. My state still has a lot of restrictions and gatherings of more than five people are prohibited at this point. We are definitely keeping our date but we haven’t decided on specifics for a plan b, as of right now. Our officiant has offered his church for the ceremony and we do intend to live stream for our family and friends out of state, 95% of the guest list because FH is military and neither of us are from this area. As far as vendors, our venue will refund our deposit up to a month from the wedding date, we plan to keep our photographer, and we may just cut our losses with the DJ. Since I already have favors with our date on them, I was just going to put together little favor boxes and send them with the invitations to the live stream to do our best to include everyone in our day.

I can relate for sure!

Our date is 10/10 and we've been nervous since March. We've recently made the decision to scale down our 130-person guest list to 30-40 (immediate, local family & wedding party + their significant others/kids).

Other than that, for the most part we're trying to keep everything the same -- still moving forward at my original venue with a ceremony, pictures, flowers, cocktail hour, and formal dinner. We have a venue restriction on dancing and social distancing is required of course, so we are most likely foregoing a DJ (I'm still looking into this) and ending the evening after dessert.

We hope to celebrate with the original 130 at some point in the future (probably 2022) with a more traditional reception.

The reasoning behind our decision to move forward with the wedding but keep it small is:

- we've been dating 5 years and engaged since 2018, and we're getting married regardless of what it looks like

- we want to start having kids soon (I'm 33)

- our venue imposed restrictions that affected our guest list and some other details

- but they are also being cautious, have great sanitary procedures, and have plenty of room for social distancing and options to go outside

- however we do have health/safety concerns, and even with the small 30-40 group, we are making it 100% clear that regardless of role in the wedding or familial relation, there is no pressure to attend if the person is uncomfortable

- we will still be able to have a big celebration at some point in the future, and we are ok with postponing this element

Our governor is making an announcement this evening, so I want to see what he says. After that, I'm going to start the process of reaching out to my vendors with the updated plans, and start working on invitations and "uninvites" (this term sounds terrible to me but I'm not sure what the proper phrase is!).

The good news is that you still have some time. But you also have to decide what your peace of mind is worth, and weigh the pros and cons. Everyone is dealing with a different set of rules depending on their state, venue, and personal circumstances, so it's hard to come up with a plan.

If I were younger or we didn't want kids, I think we would've pushed everything back til 2022.

What vendors do you have left to hire?

We just rescheduled today. Our original date was November 13th this year in Massachusetts (we're in Los Angeles.) We were planning on flying out, but Governor Baker has pretty much said until a vaccine is available, there's no way he's lifting the two week quarantine period for travellers outside the immediate states and that's not conducive for us. I was in the same boat for months. I didn't want to hire vendors just for the situation to get worse and we'd be out hundreds if they weren't willing to work with us or if we had to reschedule and they weren't available. Luckily we only had our DJ and photographer booked who have been very accommodating. It was a very hard decision because my FH has a large, tight-knit family who was very much looking forward to this, but it's out of our hands. No one expected all this to happen. You just gotta do what's best for you guys.

But I would hurry and make a decision soon. 2021 dates, I imagine, are already filling up quickly with 2020 couples moving their dates as well as the newly engaged looking for their date.

Stressed September bride here! I am holding out hope!

I am right there with you! Our date was supposed to be NYE but with everything going on we are just planning on postponing for next NYE. To us, its not worth the stress. Our venue was going to make us wait until 3 weeks before the wedding to let us know if they can host our event or not.

View Quoted Comment Wow! September is right around the corner. I am just like you-hoping for a miracle.


I pray that you get to celebrate in September🙏🏻

View Quoted Comment Ahhh! 3 weeks is not enough time to reschedule everything🙀. At least you guys have more time to plan now & not be as stressed out.!Thanks for responding.

You make it sound like we’re being defeated lol I guess in some ways it is like that.

I have certainly felt defeated these past few weeks. We ultimately decided to reschedule on account of FMIL’s health and Covid. If it weren’t for her health at the moment we may have held out until August before deciding on our October wedding. I would check to see what your venue’s reschedule policy and protocol is at the moment so you have an idea of when you would need to decide by. Lucky for us our venues and vendors have been very flexible and we found a date that hopefully everyone can reschedule to. 🤞 We’re in the process right now of confirming the new date.

Postponed our 06/13 date to 09/26. Just cancelled our 09/26 date. We ended up eloping with our parents present on our original date on 06/13. Best decision we made! Our plan is to wait until after the pandemic is over & there's a vaccine for our big celebration with our loved ones. My (now) husband I have been together for 7 years, and wedding planning for 2+. The disappointment of having the big celebration postponed until further notice is heartbreaking. But what I realized is we'll move on, and we will know when the time is right. We just told our most important vendors (photo/video, officiant and florist), that when the time is right, we'll be in touch and work with their schedules. It may not be as planned/dreamed. But will be when the world is safe, and (fun) again! lol I hate to say it, this virus isn't going away until there's a vaccine. I know in MA we won't be in phase 4 until there's a vaccine. You do what is best for you both and your loved ones will understand. Either way, think about having a small ceremony on your original date and a big reception later. It may not be as you dreamed, but you'll always remember it!

I'm an August bride. For me, the answer to, "at what point do you need to decide...?" was, "before you have to order invitations." We decided early on that we'd get married on our original date, even if we had to be alone in our apartment, which made the uncertainty easier to tolerate. We've actually planned something nice, with our immediate families in my parents' yard. We ordered actually-save-THIS-dates for our 🤞 2021 reception in late May.

Our wedding is first week of November and we only recently started feeling the stress. Our venue is taking a lot of precautions and we only have 50 guests, but it still breaks my heart to think of everyone in masks and having to stay distanced.


I decided to send out a google forms survey to our guests to see how they feel about attending. So far only half of the people have responded, but 80% are still wanting the wedding while only 20% are uncomfortable. Many people even emailed me back saying they’re really just needing something positive to look forward to/celebrate. So we will make our decision the first week of August after getting more responses. Worst case scenario, we’re going to elope then have the reception in 2 or 3 years.
We did already cancel our honeymoon and will hopefully do that sometime next year when the world calms down.

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Yep only 50 more days! Thank you, I hope you get your big day to!