The woes of rearranging your wedding for the 3rd time

Hi!


I’m due to get married 20th March 21 and up until recently was fairly optimistic however that optimism has taken a fairly deep nose dive in the last couple of weeks, especially today!!
We’re really stuck on what to do as had originally decided if we could have 30 we’d do it as we don’t want to postpone however the reality of that hit today after our venue laid out what the rules are (face masks for all guests, only being able to walk down the aisle with someone from household(!!!!!), sat in bubbles) and it all seems a bit too much of a let down for the amount of planning, excitement and money we’ve put into it.
Really unsure what to do now - but we don’t have the option to look at postponing until December so for now we are planning as normal! We’re holding off on invitations however if we keep the date we’re basically just going to be very upfront with people who have had a save the date but will no longer be invited.. I don’t think anyone can not be understanding of the situation and frankly they’d be silly to think that this is a couple’s personal choice to willingly not have the wedding they’ve originally planned for and the guests they originally wanted to be a part of that!
I hope you’re re-re-re-rearranged date goes ahead as planned and you have a wonderful day!

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Hey lovely,

I know, its such a bloody pain.

I have actually been googling nice face masks to give out on the day haha.

Table wise we may be OK as the venue seats over 100, and we've already paid for enough bloody decor for 60 guests so we'll just have to split them up a bit. And poss some loner tables lol

It's definitely not going to be the day we had initially planned, but it will have most of the aspects and all of the people there that we really really wanted anyway.

It's so frustrating as when we originally postponed we were at a point where we'd already paid most of the suppliers in full, so after speaking to a few they're not willing to keep on postponing

If someone doesn't understand why you are having to withdraw their wedding invite, then they're probably not the kind of people you should have been inviting in the first place - unless your guets have been living under a rock, they can't possibly be unaware of how Covid is impacting weddings. My mum had to miss her best friend's wedding recently, and while she was gutted not to be there, she totally understood why her invitation had to be cancelled.

Where possible, ring people personally, but if not, a generic letter or email is fine - to be honest, most guests invited to weddings taking place in the next few months are probably wondering/expecting to get their invite withdrawn anyway.

If you can, get the ceremony live-streamed. We had ours watched by people from 5 different countries, including some who would have been too frail to travel to our wedding even pre-Covid and others who got up in the middle of the night their time just so they could celebrate with us. Yes, it was incredibly odd having so few present, and having everyone sitting so far apart, but on the plus side, it was so heartwarming to see people being prepared to do this to celebrate with us. So even if your day ends up being very different to the one you planned, it will still be special x

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This so true!!!

I was thinking a phonecall will suffice, but I also don't want the small talk .

I 100% want to get it live streamed, did you ask the venue to do this or was it something you did yourself?

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I can understand you not wanting to have to deal with the conversations - perhaps an email or letter saying that you are not phoning people because you find it too painful to talk about? Most people should understand this.

We were very fortunate in that our venue had only recently installed the tech to livestream. We got married in a church, and pre-lockdown, they hadn't had any kind of ability to do this, but they installed it so that they could live-stream services to their church members, and they very kindly contacted us and asked if we would like them to live-stream our wedding for us, so we didn't even have to think about that side of things apart from providing people with the link! The quality wasn't brilliant, but it enabled all our loved ones to be part of our day.

It would be worth talking to your venue to see what facilities they have. Another option would be to speak to your photographer - ours was offering the opportunity to have ceremony-only live-streamed & recorded at a reduced rate (they normally only do edited videos of the whole day's highlights, but have introduced this new service to help couples who've been affected by Covid). Worst-case scenario, I know some people have got a guest to live-stream from their ipad or phone. We had ours done on Youtube as not all our would-be guests were on Facebook - it was set up so that it doesn't show up on searches and you can only access the video if you have the link, so a bit more private that way.

Hi I was supposed to be getting married tommorrow and postponed to 14.3.21, I’m having a lot of trouble with my wedding venue being really unfair. And it looks like we are going to have to postpone again so I’m with you on the 3rd time planning. I think if we postpone it’s going to be for 2022 xx

Can you ring them all? Much cheaper than a piece of paper and stamps. My bestfriend is getting married in October and even though I am (was) a bridesmaid she had to ring me to say she couldn't have me (absolutely gutted but I fully understand and get it and am not offended in anyway.) She had to chose between 2 bridesmaids or her grandparents so it makes sense. Real friends will understand.