Wedding Planning Diary: Postponing Our Wedding

This week, we made the incredibly difficult decision to postpone our wedding due to COVID-19, aka coronavirus. I still wake up and feel like I’m living in a nightmare – I mean, when’s the last time a global pandemic unexpectedly occurred and threw the entire world upside down? Global businesses are having their employees work from home, large scale events such as SXSW and Coachella have been canceled or postponed, travel has essentially come to a complete halt, stores are temporarily shutting everywhere…I don’t think most of us have ever lived through anything like this. I think we’ve all been affected in some way, shape, or form by coronavirus and will continue to be. Aside from how the pandemic has affected me personally, I feel incredible anxiety over how this will affect every other aspect of life for months, if not years to come.

Two weeks ago, our mentality was that we would have our wedding no matter what. I’m a very stubborn person and must admit I did not fully understand the seriousness of the virus, or what was to come. I felt that if guests didn’t feel comfortable traveling, we would understand. But we were determined to get on a plane to Italy ourselves unless we were dragged off and told we couldn’t go. Too many wheels were in motion, too much had been planned, and it felt like there was no turning back.

Postponing Our Wedding

Over the past 14 days, that mood has shifted dramatically day by day, until we realized this was so much greater than our destination wedding in Italy, and we would have no choice but to postpone our wedding. Ultimately, we felt that the health and safety of our guests and vendors came first, and who knew what the travel policies would be in three months? Would we even be able to go to Europe or come back?

I was never the girl who dreamed about her wedding growing up. Yet, going through the process of postponing my wedding is taking me through all of the stages of grief. I’m taking the time to mourn this loss. I think anyone who has planned a wedding can relate – it takes so much time and energy. The entire process is incredibly emotional but ultimately fulfilling.

Our wedding has been a labor of love for the past 9 months that we couldn’t wait to finally bring to life. Having a destination wedding and vendors abroad meant countless emails and 6 AM phone calls with my planner overseas. We adore the vendors we chose and had ironed out all of the big pieces. Invitations were sent earlier this year. My wedding dress just arrived at the beginning of this month. I had my bachelorette party three weeks ago! We had shifted to finalizing all of the small details– the music choices, signature cocktails, surprises for our guests. Having that ripped away overnight was more difficult than I expected. To be honest, I’m not the most outwardly emotional person. But recently, I’ve found myself randomly crying throughout the day and feel like I’m walking through a haze.

More difficult than the loss of the day itself, is what feels like a painful halt of the start of the rest of my life.

A little dramatic? Maybe. I mean, yes, there are so many worse things in the world and practicing gratitude is important – we have our health, our relationship is not fundamentally changing (we already feel like we are married), we can still get married here.  There’s nothing technically stopping us from going on with our lives as planned. But as many brides will tell you, when you have your heart set on something, nothing else will do. You should always have a Plan B, but it’s not what you want to do. No bride wants to execute her plan B.

AJ, my fiancé, and I have been dating for six and a half years. We’ve known for a long time that we wanted to be together forever, but took our time enjoying our relationship and getting to know each other. Getting married is not a decision we took lightly, and we were over the moon to finally make it official. We consciously chose to plan an incredibly intimate destination wedding and had planned to go on our honeymoon next year. We even started discussing our future family.

Now it feels like all of that is paused and has to be pushed back a year.

My heart truly goes out to all of the brides who are in a similar position, and the vendor teams that stand behind them, as planning and executing a wedding really does take a village. I feel incredible sadness for all of the weddings that are being postponed and canceled as a result of this virus. The small businesses that now have to worry about their livelihood. The entire wedding industry is comprised of small independent businesses that rely on these events to support their families. Losing out an entire season or even a few months of events can be devastating to these small businesses.

In the meantime, we are working with our planner to secure a new date and making the most of the situation. I’ve already joked that an extra year to prepare will mean more florals and a second dress. I’ve relaxed my fitness and wellness routine. Dessert and wine have returned to my diet. But what this experience has really done is to teach me a valuable lesson. Our family and friends have also shown an incredible outpouring of love and support. I’m beyond grateful for all of them. I feel this experience has made our relationship even stronger and ready for marriage. At the end of the day, we have each other, and nothing else matters.