CamilaAfter rescheduling my wedding for a second time (thanks a lot, Coronavirus), I want to share with other COVID-brides what I hoped to find the first time around: a step-by-step breakdown on HOW to actually reschedule your wedding.
This time around, I developed a much better system (and even coached brides through the same situation while creating their custom invitations). Knowing how stressful and emotional it can be, I’ve broken down the process in an easy-to-follow guide to help you seamlessly postpone your wedding (while maintaining some sanity and not letting things slip through the cracks).
This guide will cover three main topics:
When to Postpone Your Wedding
I won’t tell you which months are safe for weddings since each state (and even city) has its own case numbers, restrictions on events, and many other factors that affect the probability that your wedding can take place. Additionally, everyone’s risk tolerance is different, as are the circumstances for their guests. I WILL, however, say that if you have been tracking the guidelines for your area and things aren’t looking great, waiting longer is not in your best interest. Why?
You’re surrendering to the fact that you have no control over the situation and are just playing a long game of “wait and see”. Does that sound fun? Maybe that’s your jam, but it’s definitely not the way this Type A-girl likes to get down.
- You’re not the only person considering rescheduling and the longer you wait, the fewer backup dates will be available. Likely, more than half of all this year’s weddings are being shifted to next year so unless you’re hoping for a midweek wedding, the sooner you start looking at backup dates the better. That goes for your venue as well as your vendors who are all in the same position. Think of how hard it is to get your friends together for a weekend brunch then multiply that by 20 and that’s what you’re dealing with in trying to get everyone’s availability to align.
- You won’t feel as helpless once you have a new plan and date in place that also gives the world a little time to sort itself out in the meantime. In a time when SO much feels outside our control, there’s something nice about feeling like you have a shred of control over this situation.
With all that in mind, you have to make the call that feels right to you, but unless you have a particular circumstance that makes postponing out of the question, I would strongly recommend starting to sketch out a Plan B.
How to Actually Reschedule Your Wedding, Practically Speaking
Not going to lie, there is a lot involved (after all, it doesn’t take months to plan weddings for no reason), but if you follow these steps you should have all your bases covered.
- Ask your venue for a calendar of available dates in whatever date range you’re considering. Even though you have tons of vendors to consider, I’m willing to bet you’ve crafted A LOT of your wedding vision around your venue and they are likely harder to replace than your other vendors. No shade to the other vendors, but there are usually more options for those that will fit your vision (not to mention your guest count).
- Review available dates and select a handful you’re willing to consider. Try to remain open to some that aren’t perfectly ideal (either day of week or season), but don’t include any on your list that you would NEVER actually take. The goal is to have enough options so that hopefully everyone is available on one of them.
- Ask your family and bridal party (or anyone who HAS to be at your wedding) if any of those dates do NOT work for them. After all, you CAN find a new vendor if you have to, but you can’t exactly replace your parents (or other super important guests).
Create a survey for your vendors to check their availability on those dates. Instead of sending a million separate emails (or worse, making tons of phone calls) and possibly losing track of responses, simplify your life by making a survey to send to everyone.
I used AirTable (because I love AirTable and it’s what I’ve used to keep all my wedding planning organized from the beginning – stay tuned for a future post on this!), but you could just as easily use Google Forms or another platform. That way, all their responses will be in one place and you cut out all the back and forth. Whatever you use, make sure to mark the “Name” and “Date Availability” fields as required.
Bonus Tip: Send your survey to all your vendors at the same time by writing your email in the “To” field and inputting all the vendors emails in the “BCC” field. That way you only have to send one email and all their replies will come in separately 😉
- Once everyone has responded, narrow down to your top 2 or 3 options and have vendors place a soft hold on those dates. A soft hold will give you time to decide which option suits you best and also indicates to them that you’re strongly considering those dates. Also ask them to please let you know if someone else inquires about those dates so that you can make a decision quickly if needed without losing one of your backup options. (This is one mistake we made and I want to help you avoid it!). I know it’s inconvenient for them, but we’re all in this crappy situation together so hopefully they’re willing to do that for you.
- Finalize a date! If you have more than one possible date, consider these factors in selecting between them:
- Season: is any of them preferable? If you want to keep your original wedding theme/color palette/vibe, think through which date will work better with your plans.
- Day of week: If many of your guests are traveling for your wedding, consider which days might be easiest for them (e.g. a Sunday wedding might be easier than a Wednesday wedding). If your guests are mostly local, a midweek wedding might be less expensive and work out just fine!
- Holidays: Do you want to compete with a holiday for your wedding? Consider what else is happening around that time.
- Distance into the Future: There’s not a great term for this so don’t come for me, but think about how far off all of your options are. Maybe further in the future is better so you’re less likely to be in the same position again if this pandemic isn’t over soon. (TBH, when we rescheduled the first time, we thought September was plenty far off and all this would ‘surely have blown over by then’, but here we are in July and it looks like it’s still far from over.)
- Once you’ve decided on your final date, send a follow-up email to all of your vendors confirming the new date and ask for updated contracts. Ask that they please respond by confirming their availability that day (I know it’s repetitive, but redundancy is your friend here) AND ask that they send you an updated contract with the new date. You may also want to ask that they add a clause in your contract that addresses the fact that you may have to move the date again due to ongoing COVID restrictions/complications. We’ve had good luck with our vendors, but I have heard of vendors that have only offered one “courtesy” rescheduling and charged for anything after that (which is pretty awful considering we obviously would rather not have to move our wedding again).
This list of “Questions To Ask Your Vendors” from Zola is also a great reference as you have more detailed conversations with vendors and finalize contracts. - Let your guests know! Draft a letter to all of your guests informing them of your new plans. I suggest using good ol’ fashioned email here for a few reasons:
- Ease of use & Flexibility: We used Zola for our wedding website and sent the message using their platform the first time. It’s fine, I guess, but I wasn’t convinced that everyone would see the message (might go to their Spam folder) or that they would think it was anything other than a casual update since you can’t update the Subject line (which defaults to “A Message from X and Y). The second time around, we decided to go for a playful tone (starting with the Subject line of our email) because at this point what else can we do but try to laugh? (Not at the COVID situation, of course, but to be rescheduling our wedding again without knowing if the next date will actually stick).
- Cost: Maybe you’re rolling in the dough, but we didn’t think it was worth sending out new paper invitations. Besides the obvious cost factors, I made them all myself the first time around and that took FOREVER (worth it the first time, but not a second time). We also don’t know if this will be the final final date (not to be pessimistic, but I’ve gotta keep it real) and we didn’t set aside THAT much of our wedding budget for stationery. Instead, we used the money we would have spent on printing and postage on a nice takeout dinner to enjoy together. Beyond being a great meal (and decent consolation prize), we also supported a local restaurant so it was a win-win.
NOTE: As a custom invitation creator, I know some of my brides were worried about the invitation for their wedding detail shots. I’m more than happy to create a few new sets for them for the actual date and your stationery vendor can hopefully do the same. - Attachments: Using the message feature on Zola doesn’t allow you to add any attachments! While I did say I wasn’t sending new PAPER invitations, I still wanted it to be more interesting than a plain text email so I designed a cute digital postcard to insert at the top followed by our message. Even if people don’t read all of the text, they get the main takeaway just by opening the email PLUS it looks pretty. Win-win.
Bonus Tips: If you want to include a custom digital postcard like I did, I’m happy to create one for you! And if you need help with wording your email, Every Last Detail’s “Coronavirus Wedding Postponement Email Templates” is a great place to start. - Responses: As an added bonus of going the email route, your guests can reply with a nice message much more easily. We’ve been really appreciative of support from family and friends and these messages do a lot to help us get over the emotional hurdles of moving our wedding date again. Suffice it to say that using Gmail the second time around was WAY better.
- Adjust travel plans, hotel blocks and other related bookings. I don’t think I need to go into depth here because this part is much more straightforward (and much better covered on the interwebs), but don’t forget to do this step.
One last thing: remember that your vendors are also going through a very difficult time in the wake of this pandemic. They are having to juggle multiple rescheduling requests on top of losing revenue due to cancellations. The easier you can make their job, the better. Keep this in mind as you go through the process and everyone will be better off. For example, responding to my availability survey took them about 30 seconds whereas writing out a thoughtful response listing out all their availability dates would probably have taken at least 5 minutes. It saved them time AND meant that I got responses back much faster. Everyone wins.
If you’ve picked good vendors, they are in the customer service business first and will do their best to accommodate your change in plans. Think of them as being on your team and approach your conversations with that perspective. If any of them are unavailable and unwilling to return your deposit, try to figure out what they CAN do for you given that you’ve already paid them for some part of their services. Maybe your florist can’t make your new date work, but they CAN consult on which flowers would be available in that season, place orders from wholesalers and send you some videos on how to assemble them yourself with your bridal party the night before. Remember, everyone is having to compromise a little bit these days so try to remain flexible and understanding and be willing to think a little outside the box.
Alright, I think that’s all for now. I can honestly say this is one area where I never hoped to become an expert, but after rescheduling my wedding a second time, here we are. I hope this helps even ONE person avoid the mistakes we made and makes a not-ideal situation just a tiny bit better (or at least more manageable).
If you have any questions (or just want to vent about wedding rescheduling woes), please leave them in the comments below.
