We wanted to post this advice on our blog straightaway as we know how many couples have sadly been affected by this and may find this helpful. Please note from this moment on we will be focusing on POSITIVITY ONLY!
Having to postpone your wedding because of a global pandemic isn't exactly a common occurrence, so there's no handbook for brides to consult. That is exactly why we've put this post together with all of the key things you need to consider and do when it comes to postponing your wedding. It is impossible to know when 2020 weddings will be able to go ahead again, or what restrictions will be in place. 2021 dates are filling up fast as more brides are taking the decision into their own hands. Tiffany and I both made the difficult decision to postpone our September 2020 weddings until 2021, so we wanted to offer some advice on the process.
For those who have already made the decision to postpone I would highly recommend Blossoms and Blush Digital Postponement Planner – it's FREE to print it yourself. It even contains email templates for suppliers with all of the key questions you should be asking. Visit @blossomsandblush on Instagram to get your copy.
If you are currently undecided about postponing your wedding it's important to know your options for Plan B. Finding out your supplier's availability for 2021 may help with your decision, if there's lots of availability you might decide to wait longer or if there is scarce availability you might decide to act now. Some venues may even allow you to pencil in a 2021 date until it becomes clear as whether or not your original date can go ahead later in the year. We've outlined some steps below which may help with making your decision.
First of all, ask your venue your options if you choose to postpone without legal restrictions:
- Will you lose your deposit if you postpone?
- Will you be charged to move your date?
- Will the 2020 prices increase next year?
Narrow it down to your ideal month or week rather than just one day and ask your venue about availability. Suppliers are advising couples to contact them with as many dates as possible to try and coordinate everybody's availability. This will also save going back and forth to suppliers with new dates. The further away you choose for your new date, the more choice you will have, especially if you avoid the peak summer months. Have a look at a 2021 calendar only and identify where weekends and bank holidays fall, where other events you have coming up fall and dates to avoid. If you don't mind which month you get married in, as long as it's a weekend, you could contact your venue and ask them for all Saturday dates available in 2021. At this stage it is possible advisable to be looking at 2021 rather than Autumn or Winter 2020. Hopefully restrictions won't still be in place, but if they were and you had to postpone later you may really struggle to coordinate suppliers for 2021.
Contact your venue and ask for availability in your preferred month or months – for example, we asked for all Fridays and Saturdays available in September 2021. Then take that list to your suppliers and keep a list of who is available on what date and see what dates suit the majority.
Identify your most important suppliers as you may not be able to keep them all. We postponed on 1st April, just under six months before our original date, and already our suppliers had very little availability for next year. Our band had no Saturdays between March and October 2021. We were really keen to keep all of our suppliers, unfortunately we lost our videographer and MUA. You should also identify the suppliers with the largest deposits, for instance we had paid our photographers in full and knew this was non-refundable so securing our photographers was top priority. On-the-day suppliers will fill up more quickly as they can only do one wedding per day (eg. Band), whereas cake makers and florists are able to do more than one wedding in a day so they should have more flexibility. It's sad to think about potentially losing suppliers whose work you have loved for so long, but it is important to be realistic. Looking at it more positively, there may be new suppliers on the scene since you booked like our videographers.
Consider a weekday! We moved from a Saturday to a Friday and our wedding will still be the same, and now we can turn it into a 3 day celebration and have an extra night at our venue. Your guests will make the effort to be there for you.
Reaching out to your suppliers and asking these questions is not committing to postponing your wedding, but it does give you all of the information so that you can make the best decision for you and your fiancé. Even if postponing is in the very back of your mind right now it is still worth reaching out to your venue, lots of venue staff are currently furloughed so you may be waiting weeks for a response anyway.
I can't tell you what the right decision is when it comes to postponing, but I can tell you that it made me feel a lot better and so much relief when we did postpone. It was still a very sad decision though. Now I can enjoy the lead up to my wedding and celebrate my hen do abroad next year. We'll still be able to have everything the way we wanted, we just have to wait another year.
If you have any particular questions please don't hesitate to leave us a comment below and we'll get back to you ASAP.
I'll leave you with this message from @allontheboard on Instagram....
From Brides, With Love xo
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