This time next year I will be a Mrs and I will be dancing the night away with my husband under the stars and the twinkling fairy lights surrounded by our family and friends.
As I sit writing this it should have been 65 days today until our wedding, but instead, due to Covid-19 it’s now 365.
When all of this first started it didn’t even cross our minds that it would affect our wedding at the end of July, 6 months seemed such a long time, "...it’s bound to all be over by then!" Then lockdown happened and we thought maybe it will be a bit more of a rush to get things done when everything opens again, but it’ll be fine. Then slowly as the days and weeks passed and the cases and death rates soared, it began to sink in that this was going to be with us for the long haul and maybe we should start and think about a plan B.
The first call to the venue was more hypothetical really, and to see where they were at with things. This was when we realised it might not be as simple as we thought. “At the moment we are not postponing anything past the end of May. We are looking at it on a month to month basis, we think it will all be fine by July. We will be in touch closer to the time.”
My husband to be is Australian, that is where we met and lived together for 2 years before we came over to the UK. His family and a lot of his friends all live in Australia, as well as many of my friends. We also have friends scattered all over various other parts of the world, in fact over half of our guest list are catching a plane to our wedding, including the best man and one of the bridesmaids!
We left it a couple more weeks and then we heard the quarantine restrictions that were being put in place in Australia. “That’s it, it can’t go ahead!” Even if people could get on a flight they would have to go into a 2 week quarantine on arrival home, 2 more weeks off work unpaid after at least 2 weeks away, this was not going to happen. So we contacted the venue again and explained our situation, we were told the same thing, they were not postponing anything in July at this point. “But we know it can’t go ahead as half of our family and wedding party won’t be able to make it.” At this point we were told we needed to be flexible and it was suggested that we Skype in the missing guests…!! Where do I even start! Our venue is in the middle of nowhere with very limited internet signal so even if we were happy to have half of our loved ones watching from the other side of the world, it was never going to work. Plus, how would they like to get married with half of their loved ones missing!
Anyway, fast forward a couple more weeks to the due date of the final payment, which we barely had chance to withhold before we got an email stating it was due and asking if we had had any “luck” claiming on our wedding insurance. Of course not! All the wedding insurance companies are doing as much as they can to avoid having to pay out, and ours has stated that they will not pay out due to cancellation because of travel restrictions. So, no, we haven’t had any “luck” with our insurance! We replied with a very nice email, stating the facts and that we deserve the wedding we have dreamt of with all of our loved ones there and we don’t want to cancel but just move the date, is there any way they could look at it again and reconsider a postponement? Sent! An hour passed before the reply came and we were both quite shocked when it said that they had spoken with the owners and they had agreed to a postponement!!! *Dance around the kitchen* It was the best feeling, like a weight had been lifted, I don’t think either of us realised just how much it had been playing on our minds and causing us anxiety. Plus we couldn’t believe they had just given in, we had been gearing up for much more of a fight, but we were happy they had and booked the new date in straight away! Maybe they were just trying their luck?
So what next? We had to hope that all of the other suppliers we had booked could do the new date and as luck would have it they could! I think because we had gone straight for a date next year instead of trying to squeeze it in later this year, and because we had been pro-active and got in in plenty of time, they were all available. I also think at this point in time they were glad it was a postponement rather than a cancellation.
We had our new date and all of our vendors booked, we now had to tell our guests! We had opted for a wedding website with digital invites and RSVP’s, due to so many guests being overseas and because we want to be as sustainable as possible. So actually it was quite easy to let everyone know, we just changed all of the details on the website and sent out new digital invitations with a little message attached. We now have a new RSVP date for later in the year, but we are finding that some people we were really sad could not attend before have now replied yes which is a lovely positive to come out of it all.
Whilst postponing our day was a hard decision to make and really quite sad at the time, we know that if we had gone ahead it would not have been the day we wanted. Who wants a socially distanced wedding anyway!! Limited guests, no hugging, no kissing, no dancing (unless 2 metres apart!) and when we haven’t seen some of our family and friends for 4 years, since we left Australia, we are going to want to hug and kiss the s**t out of them, even if it means waiting another 9 months!
There are other positives I have found, which is kind of what you have to do in a situation like this. For example we have longer to plan so more DIY’s and more cute styling ideas.
We have longer to save up, so we can now have some of the things we had cut from the budget and we can have an amazing Honeymoon!
There is more time to lose some weight and tone up for the big day!
And we have longer to just be engaged and enjoy this time looking forward to the day. If we had kept our original date it would all be over in 65 days, whereas now we have another 365 days to prepare, get excited and look forward to our day!
If you are a Covid Bride and have had to postpone or are still deciding what to do and you would like some help or advice then please get in touch, message me on Instagram @willow_and_rust or visit willowandrustweddings.com