Though we knew this was coming many months back, we've only now gotten around to settling the new date. Back in May, we were originally pushing for March thinking this pandemic should stabilize by then. I wasn't expecting a vaccine but held out hope that our governments had enough time to form a reasonable plan to minimize risk. Boy, were we naive.
We had a March backup for a while and originally thought that no matter what, we'll get married that day even if we had to push the reception to a later time. But we quickly realized how stressful a March wedding would be. For one, we would have to get our living space ready for her to move in (her father is very traditional), which requires outside contact with contractors and suppliers and we just aren't comfortable with that in the winter amidst surging cases. Second, if cases are still hovering at the same levels as we are now, I wouldn't want the bridal party to feel pressured/obligated to attend if they're not comfortable with it. Regardless of how safe we feel it is, we want to respect each person's threshold as one just had a new born, one is immunocompromised, one is the sole caregiver of her elderly parents, and one has kids who would still be in school at that time. And third, there's the question of whether venues would remain locked as they are now in the GTA. Even if we had a nice fancy backyard to host our ceremony, it just would not be feasible in March and we wanted to use our venue.
Finding an alternative date is also not as easy as picking from what's available as we had to make sure the date in question is also an auspicious wedding date (I'm sure all the Chinese and South Asian members can relate). So if you think rescheduling was hard enough due to lack of availability, imagine having more than half of what's available not be considerable options due to superstitious parents.
So after a lot of consideration for the points above, we found a date that worked: during the September long weekend. We had originally wanted a winter wedding because we are both not fans of formal wear in the heat so hopefully September will be cool enough by that point that we won't sweat swimming pools in our black tuxes while running around taking pictures. We'll have the summer to take care of our housing needs. If the weather cooperates, we can potentially have an outdoor ceremony to further reduce risk. With some promising news about vaccine trials, maybe one will be available to the vulnerable to ease some anxieties from our older family members. And even if we can't have a reception at that point, we can have a relatively stress-free ceremony.
