Covid Wedding: Invitation Stress

We sent ours out last month for our aug wedding we know a lot of out of country people wont be able to come so we were thinking about streaming it on zoom for them all to watch

I understand how you are feeling. Our wedding was suppose to be July 4, 2020 and we ended up postponing to September 5. Generally speaking our family has been really supportive. There is one small sector though who insist on for the lack of a better word... "covid bride shaming". Underhanded comments, sarcastic remarks and they have a weird knack for making me feel horribly guilty and selfish for just wanting to have the same bridal experience as everyone else. It's hard to hear and you're right it can be discouraging. However that is just a small portion and how does the saying go? "don't let the bullies drag you down?".

My FH and I have just resigned ourselves to the fact that there will be people who legitimately can't come due to heath concerns which is totally fine. Those people have already spoken to us and they have given us their blessing. We will live stream our wedding so they can still be there if only in a virtual state. For my family in Ohio we are going to go down and have a family BBQ once COVID clears. This way we can still celebrate with them in person. It'll just be a bit later.

As far as the bullies go.. if they don't want to come. That's on them and fine by me. The overall response has blown my mind and has been very positive.

Our "change the date" cards were mailed out last week.

The biggest thing I've learned through all of this is to just breath. All we can do is take things one day at a time. We will all be able to get married. It might not be what we imagined but we can still make it special.

The brides of COVID need to stick together

We sent out an email to our 30 closest friends and family to gauge how many people would feel comfortable attending. FH was expecting zero positive responses but we have had positive responses from about half of the people we reached out to. There were a few that called and told us to postpone and were negative (and it did hurt to hear) but we are planning on getting married this year whether there's 30 guests or just the two of us.


We will be live streaming the ceremony to include those who aren't comfortable attending in-person, but we wanted to give everyone the option to attend to make sure they know we want to involve them in the day.
Mail has been slow so we sent invites after but I definitely think you should reach out to people. It helped us get back on track with planning once we knew if guests were planning on coming or not.

View quoted message Cool 👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼

View quoted message Absolutely, I agree!! I truly appreciate when past brides give us words of encouragement and hope, not being rude and inconsiderate to others. It’s a shame some people come on here to bring others down, but I guess people will always have their opinions. We all need to stick together. Your day will be beautiful! ❤️

I'm so sorry you're feeling this way!! Assembling your invites should be a fun and joyous occasion and it sucks that you've been robbed of that. I really just wanted to send a few words of support, but I'll also say this. Try not to get too far ahead of yourself! I don't mean to suggest that your fears are unfounded. Gathering restrictions aside, a lower turnout is probably unavoidable due to the other usual culprits (travel, health conditions of some guests, etc.) And it's great that you are preparing yourself for that and recognizing that, at the end of the day, it's your marriage and the life you're starting together that really matters.

But, at this point, you haven't sent out your invites, which I assume means you haven't yet received a single "no" RSVP! And you may be pleasantly surprised. Actually, you almost certainly will be. I wouldn't be too quick to assume that all of your guests will be too neurotic or anxious to be in a group two months from now, especially those who have the advantage of being relatively young and healthy. To the contrary, many will probably be thrilled to get out and celebrate a special occasion, even if they aren't conveying that excitement to you now. Speaking from personal experience, I was invited to attend a wedding in my hometown in July. They've since scaled down the guest list to locals and, assuming gathering restrictions are sufficiently relaxed that they can go forward with the downsized event, I'll be there in a heartbeat.

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No worries - I don't take any offense, It's just my opinion

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Thanks for pointing this out. It's a tough time for every 2020 bride. I feel like we're all either facing the devastation of a postponement, or facing the wrecked plans of a wedding and the stress of adapting and going through with it. A very emotional time for us all. I'm trying to comfort myself by remembering when the day is here, the most important thing to us will be the marriage, and making it as special as we possibly can.

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I can see how that would be very hurtful and I'm sorry you went through that. Everyone we are inviting at this point are those dearest and closest to us, so for me it's more of a struggle of knowing there may be no choice in the matter but to invite them and later before our day have to tell everyone not to come. I'm just going to let it go from now until then, and watch the news and hope for the best. It's really so unpredictable and although we're making the choice to walk through this and still be married, it sucks that a pandemic blew everything up for us at a time in our lives when we were least expecting it.

View quoted message I think I would rather than a few guests say no, and not come, and have a few less guests than expected... instead of having a pandemic ruin the entire wedding...


A pandemic is not a “bright side” excuse. It’s devastating. It’s ruining a lot of 2020 bride’s plans. This isn’t just a few guests that will say no, sometimes it’s 75% of your entire guest list or even more.
Sorry for coming across maybe a little stern, but I don’t think that was a great thing to say to couples going through this.

I completely understand how devastating that can be - but on the bright side, at least they have a Pandemic of a reason as apposed to some people's weddings (mine included) where people don't go solely on the reason of "it's too far" or they literally just don't RSVP even after trying to reach out? I know I was in tears more than once with my family not making my wedding for what I deemed a poor excuse.

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I have put it out there to my family that we're sending them invites regardless of what happens on the actual day. We also made up a little card "regarding covid-19" to slip in the envelopes that says to watch our registry website for updates and reach out to us with any questions or concerns. I think everyone understands it's completely conditional right now. It's very difficult, wanting to have certain people there you always imagined would be, but making the choice to continue with it regardless if they can be there or not. I think the emotions of it all are just getting to me!

New Brunswick has done so well with containing the virus, I hope it works out that his family can be there. Maybe by October they'll make exceptions for immediate family crossing? It's important to have a realist mindset as well though. It's so unfortunate this has made things so unpredictable.

I've been less excited about a lot of the wedding details. Once we postponed our reception I was able to push all those elements of planning away and preparing for our ceremony has been a little easier. Our biggest stress is FH's parents, they live in the states and his mom feels like there will be no problem to enter Canada and that they probably won't need to quarantine (his dad is more realistic) so we're playing that by ear.

I'm sorry you're feeling so frustrated. And I really hope that people aren't feeling that they don't *want* to come, people probably want to come but may be afraid or anxious about being near other people right now. Even though it's more work, I would reach out to some of the guests and see how they feel about attending. Are they anxious or worried, do they need to know precautions are in place to make them less so?