So You’ve Decided To Move Forward With Your Wedding Despite A Global Pandemic…
A Step by Step Guide To Scaling Down Your Big Day in a Covid World
First thing’s first: Kudos! It takes a lot of guts to re-plan an entire wedding from scratch in just 3 weeks, especially one as big as yours! (250+ people coming from all over the world? Who are you, Prince Harry and Megan Markle?). I know it was a tough decision to make and letting go of all the things you’ve been meticulously planning for the last 6 months was super hard, but it will be worth it, trust me.
Step 1) Anxiously watch as your venue and church “monitor the situation” and slowly shrink the number of people allowed to attend.
You know what’s coming. You can’t bring yourself to admit it, but let’s be real, this thing is going to get a lot worse before it gets better.
Step 2) Everything is canceled. Drink a whole bottle of wine with your fiancee in one night. Sulk for the next 3 days.
Honestly, you should have started working on your alternate plans way before this happened. But now that it’s happened, it's okay, just sulk. If you can muster up enough energy, call your vendors and let them know you need to reschedule, otherwise, drink more wine.
Step 3) Remember you asked the most amazing, optimistic, and resilient person to marry you, and for some reason she said ‘Yes’.
It is recommended to come back this step both between and during other steps. Ultimately, this is the reason you’re getting married: You feel like your life can’t truly start until you are this person’s husband. Everything else is icing on the cake (which you may or may not get to have at this point…)
Step 4) Get to work on gathering the necessary pieces for your wedding
Like the happy version of Horcruxes, these are the handful of things that are 100% necessary to kill Voldemort… I mean to get married.
Step 4a) Drive to Fresno for your wedding license
Literally all the other county clerk offices in California will be closed by now. Get in the car right away, bring your lunches, take turns driving and working from the car. Drive back immediately. Don’t touch anything. No bathroom breaks.
Step 4b) Find some rings
You didn’t pick out any rings before the lockdown? Now there’s no way to try anything on, or get fitted? Look for anything you can use as a ring: Got any Aluminium foil around? Bubble gum wrappers? Family heirlooms your mom has been hanging on to but has never mentioned before? Any of these will work (Though you should probably go with that last one for extra sentimentality)
Step 4c) Find a Church and a Priest
If you aren’t religious this can be a state certified officiant. If this is not the case, you are going to have a whole set of additional complications to sort out. Are there any churches in your area that will let you in? Is there any priest you know willing to marry you? Luckily you completed all the church requirements months ago and your future in-laws know a priest who knows a priest, who will let you use their church, hooray! (**whew**, it was touch and go there for a while though!)
Congratulations! You have the necessary pieces to get married!
Now I know you already rescheduled the big vow renewal and reception in October. But, THIS is your wedding day, are you telling me you’re really not going to even have cake? Or a first dance?
Step 5) Find a place to have a “reception” for 10 people (can you still even call it that?)
You can try a Church hall, AirBnb, or a family friend’s vacation home in Sacramento. The trick is to find a place big enough that people can spread out, but isn’t somewhere public where you might get the cops called on you…
Step 6) Tell your parents and her parents what you came up with. For whatever reason one of them won’t be happy with your idea. Repeat Step 5 until you find a mutually agreed upon space.
This will take a while… eventually you’ll settle on your parents’ backyard.
Step 7) Have a florist, baker, and caterer drop off everything you need to elevate your backyard reception into something magical
Remember this is your special day and although the October event is booked, nothing is guaranteed in these crazy times
Step 8) Order your suit and her dress online and pray they fit and look as nice as they do on the store’s site
In fact... order 7 suits just to be sure one of them will work (Have you SEEN the deals at Macy’s right now?!). Return the rest. Bonus points if your uncle is a tailor.
Step 9) Get a haircut
This will be done by your fiancee after watching exactly 1 youtube video. It also doubles as a great trust exercise before tying the knot.
Step 10) DJ your own wedding reception
You and your fiancee haven’t been curating that spotify playlist of love songs for the past year and half for nothing! Just make sure you spring for premium so you don’t keep hearing ads for ZipRecruiter all night.
Step 11) Have your wedding guests fill all other roles
This includes but is not limited to: decorators, hair and makeup, church vocalist, videographer, driver, and waiter.
Step 12) Have your first dance with your beautiful wife, in the presence of your closest family members.
I told you it would be worth it.
You did it! You had a magical, memorable wedding during quarantine.
Now go enjoy your happily ever after!! But don’t forget to order champagne and orange juice from instacart so you can have mimosas during your shelter-in-place honeymoon!
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