Virtual weddings

A lot of people have been using Zoom for this

We used Zoom for our ceremony, but had a family member set it up so we didn’t have to worry about making sure it went smoothly. It ended up working out great and everyone loved it.

Try some live streaming platforms maybe?

Such like YouTube live, facebook live.

But I haven't tried it.

DH's grandfather was not medically cleared to travel to come to our wedding. We had his younger cousin in charge of the facetime for the ceremony. It worked out great - grandpa was able to see and hear everything, and we didn't have to worry about his health.

Zoom and facetime seem to be the best bets - ask a tech-savvy family member to monitor, and you should be ok.

Currently Zoom is on a go for mostly everyone. Whether it's lectures, parties or ceremonies.

I agree with pp itll be zoom very easy to use

Hi Sarah,

I agree with all of the suggestions above! I would recommend using Zoom if you would like it to be private. Then you can set up a password protected Zoom call. Or, you can live stream on to Facebook so all of your friends and family can see - I have had a few friends do this!

Either way, I'm certain whatever you decide will be perfect! It's going to be so beautiful.

Sending so much love your way!

Zoom does have some limits to the free account, whereas Facebook live does not. There are other platforms but I definitely think Zoom is the most popular right now. It's what I've been using for teaching the past few months. I would definitely recommend asking a friend or family member to be responsible for hosting the Zoom meeting so that they could be the one to help troubleshoot any tech issues that may arrive. As always, there's already someone trying to make money off of virtual weddings. Wedfuly is a company now partnered with Zoom and Wedfuly basically acts as a DOC in coordinating the details, etc. but of course there's a nice price tag and lots of additional add-ons.

Our wedding package includes a live stream option. They use YouTube as the platform but they provide us a link that we can add to the website in advance. We haven't experienced it yet but we feel like it is a cool feature, especially because our wedding (hopefully) is a destination wedding.

We will be using zoom! I like that you can set it up ahead of time and send link and password to family and friends via wedding website. If you want more than 100 households to view than zoom is not the way to go, as you can only get 100 people in one conference call (at least in the free version)

I've seen one wedding that did zoom (her corporate account allowed for hundreds to join). There's also google meet, which I believe allows 250 with the free version. Then there's facebook live or YouTube Livestream where viewers only see you and you don't see the audience. Me and my fiance are doing a hybrid. We're doing a zoom Livestream to YouTube. We are having the parents of the groom join the zoom meeting so my future mother in law can do a reading or blessing (idk yet). Then that will be livestreamed to YouTube so that people just have to click a link, it is sharable, etc. We were at one virtual wedding where people unmuted themselves to say congrats, which was nice but they spoke over he bride and groom trying to say thank you...so we are asking people if they'd like to send us a note of congrats, to record a video and send it to our emails. Hope this helps!

Hi Sarah,

I'm planning the same thing as you! 50-75 people physically invited and the rest are virtual guests. Zoom is a great idea for this because they have a whole bunch of new features and they provide training videos on how to navigate through. One feature I loved is how there are breakout rooms which you can pretend that each is a separate table. I can group my relatives, my coworkers, my other friends, etc. together so they can catch up as well. Then we would jump from room to room and take pictures and talk to them.

I had a consultation with a virtual wedding business just to pick their brains and see what they do and how the flow of things are. Then, either my sister or I could run the show. Our wedding ceremony is planned from 12pm to 1pm with the reception from 2-6pm. After the physical reception, we will have the online zoom call. I plan to have our same-day edit or a video shot by one of our family members of the actual ceremony be played and have a dinner with our guests online with cake cutting, games, and everything.

If you will be using zoom, keep in mind what limitations they have if you're gonna use the free version. You wouldn't want to be cut off 45 mins after and have everyone be lost lol

Hi Sarah,

I actually just got married May 16th and we invited hundreds of people virtually (due to restrictions). We used Youtube Live and our pastor bought a mic and a tripod. He used his Iphone. We did everything-cut the cake, first dance, toasts. It really felt link a real wedding. The video quality was great. People could comment and interact with each real time, without us being able to hear them.
I you have more questions, feel free to ask. Here is the link, just so you can see the video quality was good. It starts after 10 minutes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_I2fHkXbmEo