What's Your Silver Lining in Planning a Wedding During the Pandemic?

I would have loved a small wedding right from the start... (not more that 50 or so) and my fiancé is a people person and wanted as many as possible. :0 I am so glad to be able to cut from 300 down to 80 even tho it was hard!

I would have done the same and cut down costs for now during the pandemic to ensure everything goes well and in small numbers. The celebration in the years ahead will be more towards the Anniversary party and less expensive for costs to have with all the guests attended.

I personally did all the financial aspect of the wedding and budgeted to what would suffice to keep and cancel as the planning went on track. The guest list was the same to cut from a larger number to less keeping the minimal count possible. When crunching the numbers, it seems very high and unfeasible to pay for the venue for how many of my side of the family was coming with out overseas family.

I love how all the people I don’t particularly care to invite but would have be obligatory in normal times can now be moved to zoom 🤣🤣🤣

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If things are not still good in September, we'll postpone our reception to when things are safe. But even then, I feel like a "anniversary celebration" is a step down enough, formality wise, from a "wedding" that we can get away with not inviting certain people

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Glad you had the small ceremony that you wanted in the first place, and that your family was able to join you in whatever way they can.

My income took a dent during the pandemic and if we had to keep the same reception that we originally intended, it definitely wouldn't have been easy.

Oh and I'm so happy I get to wear my dress more than once!!

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I love this aspect of weddings right now. When we were planning our wedding pre-covid I felt like I was having to choose family members I don't particularly like and haven't seen in years over friends. Unfortunately we might end up back in that situation as our reception won't be until all or most restrictions have been lifted, but I'm glad other people are reaping the benefits!!

Although we had to change our plans several times and it caused a lot of stress and tears, I do have a few silver linings.

The first is that I would have loved to elope from the start and just have a party with friends and family at a later date. That's basically what we ended up doing due to all of the covid restrictions. I was obviously bummed when we had to postpone our reception, but I'm pretty happy that our ceremony was so small and intimate. I never wanted it to be a big show.

The second is that my brother and SIL are currently living in Munich and expecting a baby any day. Even if the pandemic never happened they couldn't have come to our wedding because my SIL would have been too close to her due date to fly. They were able to watch the ceremony over zoom and they stayed up until 3am so they could chat with us after the wedding. That was really nice and something that wouldn't have been possible without the pandemic - or at least something we wouldn't have considered. They'll also probably be able to come to our reception, whenever we end up hosting it!

And finally - money. I actually quit my job earlier this year for a number of factors. But I essentially needed a change in career path and a break for my mental health. I've been on a very strict budget since then and wouldn't have been able to quit when I did if it wasn't for us postponing our reception. I think staying at a job I didn't like for any longer and planning a wedding would have taken a big toll on me and I'm glad I didn't have to go through that.

View quoted message It must be nice to feel like you're actually engaging someone rather than pushed through a conveyor belt.

View quoted message Absolutely not. Weddings bring out all sorts of weird entitlement when it comes to family.

View quoted message We went from 250 to 50 and though we are sad that certain people will have to be cut, there's definitely a good handful of people that are "obligatory invites" lol. And unless things are absolutely safe, we're standing by our number. Anyone feeling entitled can cry in their own corner elsewhere haha

View quoted message I'm definitely seeing a lot of people feeling relieved that they have a legitimate excuse for not inviting someone and being able to stand by that decision with little drama. Glad that worked out for you as well.

Like a lot of people, covid really reinforced our small guest list to every naysayer to our small wedding we already planned.
One really nice positive was when it came down to it, we ended up being the only wedding of the day at our venue, so we got the full VIP treatment. It made organizing our vendor drop offs and our getting ready so much easier because all the big weddings that took those time slots were postponed.

Definitely a wake up call in terms of guestlist count! We started at 250 guests, and have now cut down to 100. I look at my guestlist of 100 and think to myself "who else did we possibly need?". It gave us the opportunity to take a step back and realize who we really WANTED there. I look at my original guestlist of 250 now and laugh - so many people we wanted to invite just for "no hard feelings". Covid definitely freed us from that feeling of obligation.

I am actually glad to have the excuse of covid for cutting down our guest list. I don't see the need to invite extended family to begin with, so now they won't have hard feelings about maybe not getting an invitation. Does that make me an awful person?

I really loved having a super small wedding. It was nice to be able to talk with all our guests and see them all without feeling like we were running around all night.


Don't get me wrong, I'm excited to eventually have a bigger celebration! But small was lovely!