Back up wedding

Your original plan is pushed back due to the situation of travel and Covid. The back up plan of Ontario makes sense to get married here and if you feel to carry over the reception in Nova Scotia if things go well, that may work and no extra expenses to add to make it a simple occasion to celebrate. The idea of being quarantined while on vacation (unplanned) may just work out and be with your loved ones with you.

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Well dresses and suits can be done online, but it sounds like you'll need them regardless of your plan so I don't see why you can't go ahead and get that sorted now. Have you contacted a few florists to see whether they can accommodate you with 8 weeks notice? If so you could get some quotes and although it might be a bit tight I'm sure you could make something work. The other option is to DIY your florals wherever you end up having your wedding. You can get some help from your family and/or wedding party and just keep things simple.

Although sorting out details with your venue will be very last minute I assume you must have big picture things figured out like the timing of your ceremony and reception? I don't see why you can't let your guests know of the place and time and leave it at that for now. They don't really need to know much more than that even if everything was going according to plan. I'm sure everyone will be understanding that you can't give them all of the details now and that the plans may have to change last minute. For example if you are unsure of the number of guests allowed you can send invitations to the entire list but make it clear that you may need to reduce the guest list due to covid. Or if it's just things like meal options I would ask your guests to RSVP with an email address or phone number so you can get their preference closer to the wedding day.

View quoted message I don't know if they will let me postpone a second time. And it's alot of money I would still have to pay in to have an event there that's not a wedding.

If you postpone instead of cancel, will the venue in Plan A honour your deposit being used towards the new date? Maybe you can "postpone" by hosting a family gathering in NS when it's safe to do so and just get married in Ontario via Plan B on your original date.

View quoted message Thanks for the input, I was thinking of making the dinner a potluck if we have to have it in Ontario and we would provide the booze.
Our venue in NS doesn't let us make any decisions till 8 weeks out. Which doesn't leave much time for guests to know what the hell is going on, since invites were sent out Sept 2019 the first time. (Hopefully some of the understand that we can't invite to a wedding we don't know if it's going to happen). We didn't get flowers, suits or bridesmaids dresses done. Now with everything up in the air we don't really care about dresses or suits. But we can't figure out flowers till we know where we will get married.

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Since you have a private space you can use in Ontario for the backup plan I think you can get away with no additional vendors and avoid getting locked in to contracts as long as you are okay with keeping things quite simple. You can DIY the decor (candles from the dollar store/IKEA are a steal, very simple greenery/florals, maybe some string lights depending what the space looks like? - all of this can be sourced last minute if necessary), order food from a restaurant, buy a cake, and BYOB. I guess the only things you'd need to sort out in advance would be an officiant and an Ontario marriage license, but those are relatively low cost.

With regard to plan "A", I assume you've already paid all of those deposits and you'll only be paying additional amounts closer to the wedding date? If that's the case, I'd do what Amelia suggested and give yourself a deadline to decide what's going to happen. Ideally that deadline will be before any major payments are due/before there are cancellation penalties. If by that date you can't enter Nova Scotia without a quarantine period then you choose to go ahead with your plan "B".

Edit: Oops just noticed you said you only got to plan half of your wedding. What vendors/parts of the wedding were not planned?

Thanks for the input! 🙂 That's exactly what I was thinking. I am highly doubtful that NS will open up their bubble, and we do not have the vacation time to take that much time off to quarantine and still be able to get married and see visit my family as they live all over the province.
We were planning if we have to do it in Ontario, just to have it at a friend's farm.

I would pick a date for when you need to make any decisions to cancel. Entering Nova Scotia will require a 2 week quarantine for a while, I would assume until you're vaccinated. So I would think the latest you can leave plans to go to NS would be 1 month out. I fully expect the Atlantic Bubble to happen again so at least once you're in you could have a mini-moon and travel between the Atlantic provinces.


I would also recommend keeping it simple regardless of where the wedding is. If you're keeping the group small enough you might be able to have someone host or rent a smaller space instead of renting a traditional venue. We had about 20 people and my parents hosted a little reception at their house.