Latest: Roadmap & Weddings May 2020
Dealing with COVID-19 and Weddings
Dealing with COVID-19 ( Coronavirus ) and the impact it is having on Weddings. Making decisions under lockdowns, restricted numbers for gatherings and in general. Managing the Coronavirus in the short term and deciding on postponements of wedding or plowing ahead under the constraints in varying jurisdictions.
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Wedding Postponed – Coronavirus II
Coronavirus II, as people are faced with postponing their Wedding due to COVID-19 restrictions Laura Redhead Benson talks through how to deal with moving a wedding date. Some are holding tough and hoping they can still go ahead, and they might just make their wedding happen.
When to postpone, at what point do you postpone is discussed. Laura speaks in general terms so that this video remains relevant as the dates/months go on, rather than speaking about specific dates as they stand now. Hopefully you can apply the given scenario to the situations as they happen in the future.
First of extreme restrictions resulting in your venue being closed. Consider how far out you want to postpone the wedding: 2 weeks, a month, 3 months. If you are in an extreme lock down, how likely is the situation going to become more lenient, allowing you to have your wedding. You can go with a short term postponement and you may have to double postpone or you can go longer term but things may go back to some bit of normality and you may then be waiting for your new date to come around.
Lighter Restrictions may be in place, if you are in a situation where there are number restrictions and is caution generally advised. Your venue is allowing the wedding under the official guidance. Are the restrictions workable for you? Do you want to get married under those restrictions?
Numbers wise, is the reduction in numbers reasonably do-able vs does it completely change your day. Health wise, think about your own health, your family’s health, your guest’s health. When there are lighter restrictions after a period of heavy restrictions (Italy in the future) it may be a period of improvement, so weight that up when the time comes.
At some point there will be no restrictions. I think the majority of countries have restrictions in place now in some capacity so this will be a time down the line and hopefully you will not have postponed too early that you’ll have missed your date. When the signals change in the coming weeks and months, try to follow the official guidance and notice the direction the WHO and governments are going in, that may help you avoid a postponement when your wedding may be possible by the time your date comes around.
How to manage a Postponement? Remember it is your wedding so when do you want to postpone to, have an idea and then contact vendors. Reception venue and Ceremony venue are the 2 locations where large gatherings are going to happen so you may want to check what dates they have available. Or you may have a vendor that is more important than the venue and you want to check dates with them first.
Consider Thursday and Sunday weddings it may result in more availability across all vendors. Get a few options, 3 or more dates and send those dates out to suppliers to match up as many as you can. Or pick a period and ask for all availability in that month. Once you have found a date that you think works. Email clearing to all vendors and state you want to re-schedule to the new date. It is important the vendor update their bookings to have your wedding’s new date. Give them a chance to confirm but do follow up if you do not get a clear confirmation that they have recorded your new wedding date in their calendar.
Stress and Patience: In general, please do remember that people are under stress for health reason, financial reasons and given the lock downs there are social constraints on people that they are not used. In general be patient and rational when working through the problems that you will have to over the weeks and months ahead.
Impacting Weddings – Coronavirus I
Audio
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Transcript
The below is an automated transcript of the video. There may be some errors as a result but the majority of the text should flow and give an understanding of the spoke guidance.
(00:03):
Hi guys, I hope you’re all keeping well and that the coronavirus covid-19 situation isn’t causing people too much stress and panic. We wanted to come on for the last couple of days and put a video out there. Just a little bit of advice for couples who are planning their wedding. Before I get into that, I just want to touch on the seriousness of the situation and to acknowledge the fact that it is a serious situation. For some people out there, it’s not about not being able to go on with their day to day activities. It’s actually coming down to a life and death situation, especially the elderly and people that are more susceptible to the illness. So it just wants to put that out there. We want to wish you all well before we actually do get into talking. A little bit of advice. We want to give some advice when it comes to working true decisions in a crisis management situation, the crisis management situation and this case is the coronavirus and in relation to your wedding.
(00:57):
When it comes to making decisions in reference to your wedding, there are restrictions put in place. This is different all over the world, for example, the Irish government came out yesterday with guidance to consider canceling gatherings over a certain number. The UK at the moment doesn’t have restrictions on gatherings. Italy is in complete lockdown. The U S have canceled Broadway and put in travel restrictions. These restrictions throughoout out the world are changing day to day and this will impact the decisions you can make going forward in terms of the couples out there who are trying to make a decision whether your wedding is in a couple of days, a couple of weeks or a couple of months, we’re going to share with you what we’re hearing, what we’re seeing and how we would manage a crisis situation ourselves. I really hope that this will be helpful to you in certain situations. Unfortunately, there is no decision to be made if you are planning to have your wedding in a country where there is a full lockdown, that decision has been made for you.
(01:55):
If you’re planning on traveling to another country where there are travel restrictions. Again, unfortunately the decision has been made for you and you were being pushed into a situation of canceling the wedding for the foreseeable future, but looking at maybe rearranging something in the near future. Alternatively, you may be in a situation where there are strict number constraints. There are advised number constraints are there are no number constraints. Initially, there are extreme strict number constraints in Ireland at the moment. There are advised number constraints, but in the U K there are no Nora constraints. This is changing day to day, but as it stands now, this is the situation we’re in. Given the constraints, you may be able to continue with your wedding. You may be able to go ahead. We do reduce number of guests are, you may need to postpone the wedding. We’re going to talk to the problem from the perspective of each of the key stakeholders.
(02:47):
First and foremost, the couple. How comfortable are you with the situation? Do you have concerns? What are your opinions? Actually sit down and speak to each other as a couple. Get a feel of what the other person’s opinions are. How comfortable are they with actually either going ahead with the wedding and creating a gathering of your guests, putting yourself in that situation, or are you more comfortable with the idea? Of a postponement. As we widen the circle and we talk about family and friends, how comfortable are you with continuing with the wedding as originally planned? You may be continuing with the wedding at a reduced scale, but either way, are you comfortable with bringing this group of people together? How comfortable are you with the whole situation? Think about this as a couple. You need to have that comfort in place before you go ahead.
(03:40):
The ceremony location, when it comes to the ceremony or location, this is very important. The whole reason you’re getting married is to actually say, I do put a ring on that finger, the ceremony location, be it religious or nonreligious. You need to contact the person who’s actually managing that location. You need to find out how flexible are they, what kind of rules do they have in place. It may be the situation that the ceremony location has stricter rules in place than the actual venue location. If this is a case, an option to you maybe to have reduced numbers actually at the ceremony, you still actually get to see I do. You still actually get to get married, which is the main point, but then you can also have a little bit of a party afterwards with a slightly larger number of people at the venue if their rules are a little less restrictive.
(04:29):
If it’s a case of your ceremony, venue can no longer accommodate the actual marriage. Then do look at alternatives. Everybody out there is going to do everything in their power to help you where they can. The venue may even be able to facilitate the actual wedding when you had planned to have it somewhere else. Originally, there were many other wedding venues out there. Everyone’s going to have different rules. Everyone’s going to have different restrictions. Don’t just decide this can’t happen because the ceremony venue isn’t being as flexible as you’d hope they would be. The venue, this is probably where the most people are going to gather. You need to contact your venue. You need to get an idea of what their rules are, what their restrictions are and what their policies are. From what we’ve seen, there’s different approaches been taken by different venues. The first one we’ve seen is a case by case situation where the will give their suggestions to the venue, the venue consider it, and they try to apply it to their in house policies.
(05:28):
The second one we’ve seen is where venues are willing to take reduced numbers. Everything from originally having 150 to 200 guests and reducing that down onto the hundred people to actually accommodate wash the government has advised. And the third one is hotels, venues. They’re being a little bit more restrictive and what I would say to you in this scenario is whatever they’re saying to you, whatever they’re advising, think about it. What are they saying to you? Does it make sense? Propose back to them solutions that you might see ways around things and just try and stay rational yourself. Outside of the venue. There are numerous vendors that are involved in your wedding day. Everything from florist to cakers to photographers and so on. In this situation there could be five to 10 if not more actually involved in your wedding day at any stage, any of these vendors, maybe self isolation in this case, contacting them weeks before the wedding isn’t going to put you in a more knowledgeable situation.
(06:39):
Things change day to day. They may not be isolating today but they may have to self isolate tomorrow, the week of the wedding. Stay in contact with your vendors, make sure that they’re still available to you nearer the wedding date. All the vendors will stay in communication with you. They should be contacting you closer to the wedding just to let you know that they are still available and checking in with you that you haven’t changed under the wrong plans. If you’re going to head with the wedding with the original plan or with the reduced number. If your vendor is not self isolating, they will more than likely be there for you on your wedding day. If you decide to postpone your wedding, when are you going to postpone the wedding too? Are you running the risk that if you’ve [inaudible] by two or three months, are you having to do another post moment?
(07:30):
This is something to really, really think about. How far out are you going to postpone your wedding? The other side of things will postponement is with all of your vendors, there is a chance that not all of them will be available on your new date due to other commitments and other situations that stop them from being there. So these are things to really, really think about. Are you going to postpone and how far out will you posrpone too? If there was a large number of couples who do decide to post bond, there may also be a cluster of couples trying to book in dates in the coming months in the coming year. So there may be an influx in lack availability as time goes on. So these are all things to really, really think about. The wedding industry is like one big community as what is looking out for each other.
(08:20):
Uh, suppliers. We are all very, very people focused and as a rule, the wedding community tends to look out for people. They tend to go above and beyond on a normal day. No mind when we’re actually in a crisis situation. The wedding industry take pride in what they do and we really are there to help. We hope this video helps you work through the various problems that are going to occur like we did in this video today. Break it down into different sections. Take it problem by problem. This is the only way you’re going to deal with the situation. Little pieces at a time. Don’t look at the full picture because it might become a little bit overwhelming piece by piece. Step by step. The situation is going to change day to day. You may have the best intentions to make plans for two, three, four weeks down the line, but unfortunately things are going to continue to change.
(09:17):
This is a short term crisis management situation. Until there was a long term solution on a global scale. So what this means to you is that you can check in on the big ticket items a few weeks out if this puts you at ease. But as I mentioned before, because people may be forced to self isolate, you may not have the full situation or you may not be aware of exactly what’s going to happen until much, much closer to the wedding days. I hope this video helps and I wish you the best of health. Hopefully the situation is resolved sooner rather than later, and that we can all go back to a little bit of normality, stay safe, and look out for each other.
