Small ceremony and reception later?

Your wedding being just immediate family is fine and your guests can understand to postponing the reception for a later date given the circumstances. Its fine to go ahead as your plan B of eloping.
Good call on the research for marriage license Danielle to know where couples can apply for marriage license. Following through your research, I came across this website that explains what steps for couples to know if they get married to register after with their insurance companies. This can be read up upon by anyone interested.

Can I get married during the coronavirus?
https://www.inquirer.com/health/coronavirus/can-i-get-married...

View quoted message Appearently Zorra is accommodating marriage licenses https://www.zorra.ca/en/index.aspx

If we need to postpone this is what we will do. Have a small ceremony(likely at our venue) with just us, my parents, his parents. Then plan for our reception to take place on our back up date. I sure hope we don't have to, but who knows at this point!

Yes! This is now our current wedding plan....I'm slowly warming up to this new reality.

Were were due to have a large wedding in BC August 2nd, and lots of international guest including my family flying in from the UK. We decided against going ahead for every-bodies health and safety, and totally cancelled 95% of our plans for that day. I have spent the past week calling and emailing cancelling bookings, and trying salvage deposits/payments back etc where possible.

Now I'm in full planning for a backyard wedding at my future in-laws for just 20 people (restrictions pending etc).

We will be having a ceremony followed by a light lunch which will last from 12noon till 2:30pm, after that we will go and have private photo's taken and that will be the end of our wedding day here. I am hoping one of the fancy hotels will open up again downtown for us to spend our wedding night, I might be dreaming about that! The ceremony will be streamed back to the UK, and to all those guests who we aren't able to have at our wedding (so much for the no social media wedding! HA!). We sent out a "Change of Plans'' email this week too.

THEN in the Spring of 2021 we will fly to the UK and hold a reception there! We are hoping a few friends and the in-laws will make it with us too, it sounds hopeful so far. After the reception we will go away on honeymoon in Europe.

It's been a week of emotions, but I am feeling better for us making the call and on the bright side I now get to wear my dress twice!

I don't think that it would be too much to ask of guests. I have a cousin who is/was supposed to get married this June... and if she were to still get married and just do the reception when this is all over it would not make me want to attend any less than I do right now. I can't imagine anybody being upset by that (except the older generation if they don't get to see you get married LIVE - but even then those people HAVE to realize that right now is uncharted territory and to suck it up because it's not about them).

Yes,but i'm waiting for May 4th when the government will be lifting the measures. We will decide then.

we were planning to do a small ceremony and reception later. I think alot of ppl are going this route. I hope our guest will understand considering the circumstances.

We're making the decision bin July, but if we do postpone our plan is to get legally married on our scheduled day and have our reception for our first anniversary. I'm hopeful we can still have our photographer, and that I can find someone to do my hair and makeup.


We haven't told our parents yet. I don't want to upset anyone prematurely. I have a feeling that my fiance's family won't be able to travel in from the US and it isn't fair to get married with my family and not his so we will have only the legally necessary witnesses. I mentioned the plan to a few friends and they were supportive, they still want to celebrate with us even if it is a year later than planned.

Considering it yes but we can’t do anything until marriage licences resume (they’re currently being suspended here in Ontario)...
If we have a big reception anyway I’m thinking we might as well wait because our ceremony is at the same location so I dunno

Yes - it is what I am considering. I am also part of a wedding group on Facebook and someone asked the same question. There was a ton of positive feedback about it. I say you should absolutely go for what you and your fiance think is best. Your guests are there to celebrate you both. You would not be asking too much from them.

For myself, I would do the ceremony as soon as the ban gets lifted then have the reception next summer (2021). Also your guests will feel more relaxed at the party if it is next summer rather than this year.

This is our backup plan. I'm hoping that we will be able to have our dream summer wedding, but if things don't settle down it will be just us, our officiant & limited people (depending how many we can have). We will also be live streaming it. If we go this route we will be holding our reception maybe next summer or the summer after, & do a little vow renewal, to make up for it.

I think this is a great idea!


If we had time and weren’t moving far from our venue, we’d have a ceremony and move our reception to a later date in 2021 or 2022.
Unfortunately, we won’t be doing that for us - but we would if we felt we could.
I think guests will be really receptive to changing the date. It’ll give them something to look forward to.