Brides who got still had a ceremony in 2020 - Are you having a party later?

We got married April 25th with just our minister and maid of honor and best man, family watched from a distance and we set up a video chat for immediate family to join in. We are planning to do a renewal ceremony April 25th 2021. Our guest list was relatively small to begin with and we have reduced it down to 50 and have back up plans figured out if we need to further reduce. We’re hoping restrictions will be eased enough by then in order for us to somewhat have a reception, we’ve both kind of come to terms if we cannot have dancing and at this point just want to have our close friends and family together to celebrate with us!

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Yeah we were very upset when we first found out but enough time has passed that I'm okay with it now. It was so beautiful but I'm less tied to everything being perfect now that it will just be a party.

I've definitely thought about not having a reception or at least not a full blown reception with dinner to save some money, but my husband is very attached to celebrating properly with everyone. We also have small deposits in limbo with our day of coordinator and caterer so we'd lose those if we outright cancelled. Fortunately we got back our venue deposit.

For us I think a reception will be nice because the majority of my extended family lives in Manitoba and we are in Vancouver. My husband still hasn't met any of my extended family except for my grandparents so it will be good to see everyone and have him finally meet them! We also think everyone will need a good party after covid and we hope our reception can be a sort of joint wedding reception/end of covid party.

We'll see though. We likely won't have it for at least another year so things could change and we might decide it's not worth the cost.

View quoted message Yes I totally agree! I’m happy with what we did, but a big part of me still wants to wear my actual dress (I wore a much simpler dress for our ceremony) and celebrate with ALL of our friends and family! I love weddings and think they’re so much fun! So I feel like a part of me will be super bummed if we can’t do it this year. In our minds though, it seems silly (for us) to postpone the reception another year when we’ll already have been married for 2 years at that point. We do have some deposits for photographer/DJ, etc, but we were super lucky and our venue only required a $1000 deposit! I know other people have so much more money invested. So for us, at that point I almost feel like it’d be irresponsible to spend so much money on a reception (2 years later) when it could go towards something else like a house (we still rent). So I guess ideally we’ll still have the reception this year and if not we might not do a reception at all. So many things to think about. And now I’m rambling haha.


Do you guys have a lot of money locked in?

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Also - holy .. your venue is being demolished?! Which venue? I'm so sorry to hear that!

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WOO Congrats! I LOVE that idea!!! We were thinking of doing it exactly 1 year out as a first anniversary but another wedding popped up that weekend and May seems a little too soon now. That's amazing you get to wear your gown again!!!! Major perk!

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Congrats!!! Covid can't stop love! I feel like it's such a great way to start a marriage - letting nothing get in the way of your love! But gah - I feel the exact same way about the reception - Part of me feels SO content with how we celebrated, and part of me still wants to wear my dress that I didn't get to wear and have a party! Either way, so so happy we did it and enjoyed the beautiful intimacy of the day that we wouldn't been able to really have if we waited.

So are you considering not having a reception then? Do you have money still locked in too?

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Congratulations! Sounds like our ceremony! Have you thought about not doing a reception? We're kind of thinking of just letting it be but we still have some money tied to our vendors. So hard!!!!

We had our ceremony in November with our officiant, photographer, and 6 guests due to covid restrictions. We plan to have our full reception at some point in the future but have next to nothing planned at the moment because the venue we planned to originally use is being demolished. We want it to be a full reception though. We'll both wear our wedding outfits, we'll have a dinner, speeches, dancing, etc. The only things I don't want us to have are things I didn't want anyway like a first dance, bouquet toss - basically anything overly traditional.

We're planning to wait until all restrictions are lifted to have our reception. We want everyone to be safe and we want it to be a really fun party where people can hug and dance and not worry about the pandemic. Right now it's looking like that won't happen until late 2021, but 2022 is probably more realistic, so we're just playing it by ear and maybe we'll book a new venue sometime next year for 2022. That being said, if we need to wait longer for a completely normal reception I think we will because it seems like a waste to pay tens of thousands of dollars for something we aren't totally happy with given we're already married.

We had a small ceremony on our original day this past August with just immediate family and bridal party. We postponed the big celebration to August 2021. But now I’m worried that might not even be able to happen. I think we’d only go through with it if we can have it with our full guest list and dancing. We don’t wanna go through with it if people will still feel uncomfortable coming. But then we also don’t wanna postpone the party another year, cause then it’s so far from our original date and just seems like an expensive party. I don’t know what we’ll do. I’m really happy we went through with our orginal date because it was super intimate and special, but I still can’t help but feel like we were robbed of the full experience as we didn’t even do a reception at all. (But then I feel guilty for feeling this way when Covid has affected other people so much worse obviously...it’s such an emotional roller coaster lol)


I’m really hoping 2021 gets better for all of us!

We got married on October 2nd and are planning to have our reception on October 1st so that we can countdown to our first anniversary!


We had a small reception (my parents, his siblings, and our wedding party) this year so next year will be about 80-100 people. We're using the venue we originally booked, or photographer is coming back, and we hope that my brother, his parents, and the grandmothers can all be there. We will wear our wedding clothes again (yay second reason to wear the dress!) and we will do a lot of the traditional elements we missed this year like an official first dance, speeches, and the bouquet toss.