Wedding canceled

I’m sorry you had to cancel. That may be my reality too soon. Italy would have been amazing. For me right now, the location of my destination wedding means the world to me. I haven’t be forced into the decision yet.

Does Italy mean something for you 2? Or is getting to finally be married more important? Eloping sounds lovely to me.... maybe in Italy ? Depends on what your heart desires. I’m not looking to start a family or announce our love to the world. I just want a celebration with my best people in my favourite place, so waiting would be ok for me.

It’s such a hard decision.

I’m so sorry you (and so many other brides) have had to contend with this unpredictable craziness! We also had to make the difficult decision to cancel our wedding due to covid19. Because the date we chose was very meaningful to us, we decided to postpone ours exactly one year. We talked about eloping or just going to the courthouse on our original date, then having the celebration with our friends and family next year, but ultimately decided just to wait it out for our new date. We, personally, felt as though getting married now than celebrating later with family would seem less special. We really want to be married in front of our friends and family, and have the wedding and celebration we always envisioned. It was a bummer realizing we had to wait a whole additional year, but postponing has had some positive points to it as well- more time to save money (and add some additional things we had originally wanted, but couldn’t afford at the time ), get in better shape, grow out my hair, etc. I think the best thing you could do would be to write a pros and cons list for each option and decide which items are most important to you. And listen to your heart!

View Quoted Comment My family is Italian so getting married in Tuscany was my dream. The important thing to me though is just to beable to get married to my fiancé with our closest friends and family. My only concern of eloping or something extra small would be that one day I will be sad I never got the traditional wedding things that everyone looks forward to.


I’m so sorry you may have to postpone or cancel. I hope it all works out for you!!

View Quoted Comment I’m so sorry you had to postpone, but I love how you’re looking at the bright side. I am also thinking of doing it next year. I’m scared I will miss out on all those wedding traditions and regret it down the road. I also think it is special to have that official moment of becoming husband and wife in front of our families. Goodluck!

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That’s a hard choice. I’d be inclined to have a small traditional wedding, and maybe having an extra amazing honeymoon in Tuscany? If you don’t want to wait any longer that is. Good luck, whatever you do I’m sure you won’t regret it! And if for some reason you really miss that traditional wedding you could have a vow renewal in 5 years and re make your wedding day? I don’t know if people do that but maybe lol

I'm kind of confused. You said that you can't postpone but wouldn't be exactly what you would be doing if you had the ceremony and reception next year? I guess I don't understand.

View Quoted Comment Meaning we couldn’t postpone the wedding we had already planned bc it was in Italy we couldn’t expect our guests to replan such a huge vacation. We had to cancel our original wedding and will need to plan something new. A postponement in my view would have meant same venue with a different date.

View Quoted Comment That’s a good idea as well. Thanks for your advice 😊

View Quoted Comment Oh okay that makes more sense then. If you feel an elopement might make you feel like you missed out on something then I wouldn't do it. I think if you want to elope that had to be a decision you are 100% okay with and it sounds like you have doubts. What I would do would be to have a small ceremony then have a vow renewal and reception later on.

We postponed our wedding by a full year, but I'm really nervous about it and finding it hard to feel excited. We put down a bunch of money on deposits that we could not get back if we outright canceled but we did have the option of postponing, so that is why we went that route. If I was in a position where we had to outright cancel, I would elope or just have an intimate micro-wedding this year without hesitation and just anticipate having a big party to celebrate with a larger group of friends and family sometime in the future when things get better. Right now I just ebb and flow between feeling somewhat hopeful and still really nervous and worried about next year.

Having a big wedding was never a huge priority for us but we always wanted to celebrate with our friends, even if not on the same day. We originally discussed having a small ceremony followed by a party later, but ended up planning to do an all in one event with about 80 guests. I was really excited about it until Covid happened. At this point, I honestly wish we just centered our wedding plans around the two of us and never planned to include so many people. Now we feel a certain obligation to include our parents and members of our wedding party and the friends we asked to officiate and really all I want to do is run off with my FH and get married and not have to give one cent about what any other people think. I feel like if we do something small now and then do something else later it won't feel special to people, so if I could have my way, I'd just go elope with my FH and an officiant and photographer who don't know us and don't have any opinions about who we are or what our wedding should look like. Then whenever we do our party everyone else would be seeing us marry for the first time.

You should pick whatever is right for you and your partner. Every situation is different, but just remember in the end your wedding and your marriage is about the two of you and absolutely no one else. I wish you the best of luck in whatever you decide.

View Quoted Comment I am so sorry you had to postpone. I’m sure tour wedding will be beautiful though! Thank you for your advice. I feel like Especially in these times there is no “right” way to do things.

Hi Hayley! I'm so sorry you're dealing with this - the international travel element has definitely made it even harder on destination brides!

I've seen a few people talking about how their destination wedding plans have been affected in this discussion: Destination Brides & Covid. What are you doing?

You should also check out these conversations where other brides have had similar questions about eloping vs postponing (or doing both!):

Eloping and postponing big Wedding- will it still be special?

Married this year - “wedding”/marriage celebration next year?