Thoughts for a wedding redo?

Ugh, this is heartbreaking. I would definitely talk with your H and come up with a game plan. When brides ask me for advice, I’m pretty honest, almost too honest; but it is to be selfish on your day - you get 1 wedding day, and truly, should be about the two of you and nobody else. Most people with regrets tailored their day in some way to accommodate someone else. Going forward, like you mentioned, 2021 is not going to be much better. The vow renewal in 2022 could be an option for a nice celebration or do an island vacation with a bunch of friends and family. Wishing you the best 🤍

The only suggesstion I can give is to make sure you're doing something because you know it's best for tou rather than doing something because of societal expectations. I personally would just cancel and be over with it. The wedding day is difficult to be your top 100 days when you just found out the news about your beloved mother and are probably still grieving or preparing for possible grief.

Can you get a refund and choose a different venue that will allow you to book for 2021? Or plan the destination elopement that you originally wanted?

I’m so sorry, this seems like a lot, I would say plan for 2022 and DO IT BIG! At least you’ll have something exciting to look forward to.


You deserve it! ❤️

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I agree with you, Yasmine. Why not plan the destination elopement you originally wanted? That way you get to have a symbolic wedding with just you and your spouse and a wonderful vacation as well. I think the destination elopement would do the trick to help you overcome the feeling about your initial modified wedding, and from there, you can decide if you still want a big reception later when things get back to normal.

Hi all.

Thanks for the thoughts and well wishes. For the record we are completely on board with our venue's assessment of the situation and don't think a non-Covid wedding will be likely in 2021. We have no interest in hosting a socially distanced event during the pandemic, nor risking the health and safety of ourselves or our loved ones to celebrate. So the venue is not the issue at all here.

Additionally, I don't foresee plane travel until the pandemic has wrapped up, so whatever we do, it's unlikely to happen until a widespread vaccine is available and life "goes back to normal" whenever that may be. My husband and I are in our mid-late 30s already, so we were hoping to be done with the wedding and last big trip before trying to start a family, but now that timeframe just doesn't work for us. If we want a biological child, we need to start trying now (we've already delayed because of Covid and my mom's diagnosis, but I'm turning 35 in a few weeks so we can't keep putting that off). I can't imagine leaving a newborn alone for a trip, and I can't imagine a romantic getaway with a newborn in tow, so I don't see that happening for some time either.

Also we spend so much time, energy, money, etc in planning our wedding that I really don't want to go through that whole process again to plan something else and only have that fail too. Nothing about finding a new venue or new vendors or trying to re-plan any of the things we've already planned and spent money on appeals to me at all. I'm pretty fatigued, burnt out, and just jaded by the whole wedding thing, but I feel like just canceling everything won't help either. I'm worried that if/when life goes back to normal I'll never enjoy another wedding because it will just bring up all the sadness and grief about losing my own.

It sounds like what would truly make you happy is to cancel your big wedding celebration and do a special elopement with just you and your husband. You can pick somewhere within a decent driving distance. Maybe have a photographer there to capture it if you wanted. And make the day the elopement you two originally dreamed of. It will be about just you two and can easily be Covid friendly.

We cancelled our reception altogether because I couldn’t take the stress anymore and it seemed like I was gonna spend thousands of dollars on something i didn’t even have good memories of. I don’t regret it. My husband and I ended up having a really special elopement we would have never had otherwise. And you’d be just as married as anyone else

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We're already married though, so what's the point of a local road trip? We did the vows, we signed papers, it's done. It just didn't feel special at all, and that is what I am upset about. I feel like we can "pretend" and drive to some pretty spot and get dressed up and do our vows over again but it won't change the way I feel about the day we got married and the experience wouldn't be any different than something we could do at any other time.

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We ARE already married. Our venue let us use their outdoor ceremony site so we went there to say our vows and sign papers, because it was accessible to our parents, who won't hike mountains or do anything remotely adventurous or exciting. I would have actually been really excited if we could have switched our wedding to an adventure elopement and taken advantage of having just a small group and doing it somewhere special. We should have just changed our plans entirely, but we compromised, which felt like the right thing to do, but it really was all to please other people and nothing that we actually wanted for ourselves and now I regret it. We should have eloped, sent our parents some photos, and then told them they could be there for the celebration/reception whenever that happened. But we didn't do that, and I don't feel like we can "undo" and "redo" our wedding, short of getting divorced and remarried.