There is no doubt that COVID-19 has touched us all in a number of many ways, but there is one thing for sure, if someone had told me that I needed to plan around a global pandemic when planning our wedding – I certainly would not have believed you! Even as the stories of the Coronavirus spread, grew and grew through the month of February this year, I think I was in a state of denial (along with the rest of the nation) as I was most definitely thinking more short-term, wondering how the spread of the virus would impact our Anniversary Engagement celebrations in March – where we were going back to Barbados re-live Joe’s proposal.
Flash forward a month on from February and there I was, not on a yacht on the Caribbean Sea, but frantically trying to get Wedding Insurance, cancel our holiday and stressed to the nines wondering what to do about our Wedding and whether in fact it would go ahead. For someone like myself, who is a meticulous planner, a woman of many ‘To Do Lists’ and a brain that is always working several months ahead – navigating the impact of COVID-19 has been particularly difficult – as how do you plan for something which we as a globe are not able to determine when the knock-on effects of the spread will end?
After a couple of days, of self-denial and inner brain panics, I started to devise a plan of how to explore all the possible avenues available for our July 2020 Wedding. I thought it would be helpful to share my approach, in the hope that this could be helpful for anyone in the same position. By approaching this in a ‘Step-by-Step’ way, it allows the subject of ‘whether your wedding will go ahead’ to be more manageable and less overwhelming, leaving you with a positive outcome once you have completed all the steps below.
Step One: Wedding Insurance
Do you have wedding insurance? At the start of March 2020, we did not have wedding insurance, so I frantically rushed to purchase it. At the time, there was only a few companies offering it – the likes of John Lewis and Debenhams had already stopped issuing new policies amid the pandemic spread. We managed to get our Wedding Insurance issued by Emerald Life. Phew! You would think that once we had secured the Insurance that we would have felt more at ease, in the knowledge that our Wedding was insured…
Well actually, no, after a careful read of the terms and conditions, it was quite the opposite. After reading through the policy, it became apparent, that if our Wedding was to be cancelled due to Government instruction that no mass gatherings over a certain number of people was to be ordered, then this would be considered to be ‘Government Regulation or Law’, all of which all Wedding Insurance companies, do not cover as a part of the cover that they provide. Shocking right?! Well I was indeed shocked.
Secondly, if your venue was to cancel your wedding due to a spread of the virus throughout their property, then this too would not be covered by a number of the insurers. So you might be wondering, like me, what indeed does the wedding insurance cover you for? Our insurance covers us for a number of things (listed below).
- You, your partner or immediate family are taken ill (this would cover the Coronavirus)
- One or more of your Suppliers failed to turn up or cancelled
- Death of a partner or immediate family member
Unfortunately, insurance companies are not displaying helpful transparent guidelines on their website and are instead asking each policyholder to get in contact with them directly. Leaving you in an unclear position and not knowing whether your wedding will be covered until the actual date of cancellation arrives.
Step Two: Venue and Suppliers Payment Dates
After finding out that relying on our Wedding Insurance company was not the most stable approach (although I do believe it is good to have this as a back up, as it does provide insurance for some of the things that I do believe should be covered). I then started to look at the amount of money already paid up front, the future instalments to be paid before the wedding date as well as looking at the suppliers who we had already paid the largest amounts to and would be liable for paying in the upcoming month.
Our wedding is not your ‘typical wedding’ where it takes place at a large Wedding Venue and the majority of it is arranged by the Venue itself. We wanted an outdoor Summer wedding surrounded by nature (as it nature is one of our greatest loves), so we opted to hire an area of land that had all of the above and then designed our wedding from top to bottom, from the structure to the suppliers, to the outdoor and indoor set up. This approach means that we have many suppliers, all of which have different payment terms and timings. So in order to understand, ‘who our biggest suppliers were (on a money basis)’ and ‘who was to be paid soon’, I consulted my Wedding spreadsheet (sample screenshot below), so that I could filter on ‘amount paid’, ‘outstanding to be paid’ and ‘next payment date’.
If you don’t already have a wedding spreadsheet, this is something you could easily create, as you would need to go through your paperwork/emails to work out all of the above anyways, so you might as well input the information into a spreadsheet, to make it easier for you to work with in the future (it will become your holy grail!). Once you have created the spreadsheet and filtered on the columns discussed above, you will know who are your ‘Largest suppliers’ and who you are most ‘liable’ to for near future payments. This will allow you to move on to the next step and prioritise the suppliers which are most important for you to work with, either because of what they are supplying (for example, the ‘Marquee’, ‘Catering’) or because you have already paid a considerable amount of money to them. It is more than likely that these two categories will go hand in hand with one another.
Step Three: Venue/Suppliers – Negotiate Payment Holiday
Now that you are more informed of your upcoming liabilities and who are the most important suppliers to provide the bare basics of your weddings. The next step would be to: (1) see if you will have the required amounts to be paid at specific dates, (2) if required, whether you can postpone/move your next payment dates to a later stage, nearer to the date of your wedding.
As we are all aware the spread of the virus has affected persons and businesses in a number of different ways – so you may not have the funds required for the specific dates, due to being furloughed from work or even worse, having lost your job for the short term. Therefore, postponing the next payment date may be vital to you and an important step to agree in order to not loose any money already paid and more importantly the supplier you require for your wedding. Alternatively, you may wish to postpone your next payment to a later stage, to minimise the amount of money lost, should you decide nearer to the time you are unable to go ahead with your wedding in light of the ongoing regulation of activities due to the pandemic.
Going into negotiations is always a difficult step, especially if it is not something that your used to or do as a part of your job. The key thing to do before opening negotiations, whether that be on email or on the phone, is write down what you wish to achieve and the reasons why. Before your call, you can then and remind yourself of your aims and reasons so that navigate the discussion with confidence. During communications, I think is also important to see the negations from the other sides perspective and think/imagine about the problems that the company too may be facing during this time. When outlining your aims before your call, I think it is good to decide what your ‘best case outcome is’, you ‘worse case outcome’ and what your ‘compromise outcome’ is – this will allow you to steer the negotiations in the right way and also prepare you for those questions or proposals that might be discussed on the phone.
Additionally, I heavily advise that opening conversations about different solutions should be discussed on the on the phone rather than email, as it is more personal and these are are often difficult discussions which better dealt with personally rather than behind the formal discourse of an email, where understanding from both sides can be lost behind the words on a screen. My last point, is to remember to be flexible and fair, as we are all in this together and these are people that you are going to lean on and rely on, to eventually create your ‘perfect day’ with as little stress as possible – ultimately, they do not want to lose your business and they wish to provide you with the happiest day possible.
Step Four: Secondary date?
Even after covering all of the steps above, you still may be wrecked with stress and ongoing thoughts of the ultimate question ‘Will our Wedding Day go ahead?’. Unfortunately, even if you have been able to secure wedding insurance and negotiate different payment dates, this still doesn’t answer this question for you. So before or whilst you are negotiating your postponed payment dates, you should ask your biggest suppliers whether they would be open to agreeing to pencilling a ‘back-up date’ should your original date not go ahead. This may not be possible for Wedding Venues that are very popular, as often some venues are booked 18 months in advance, however, if you are not open to re-scheduling your wedding date for the following year, maybe agreeing to a back up date in the winter may be suitable for you.
It is most definitely worth asking the questions, as naturally some wedding parties will have rescheduled there summer date due to financial issues and/or family members unable to attend due to them needing to travel from other countries. For those venues that are not the typical ‘wedding mills’ it may be that the venue has availability in the late summer/early Autumn on a weekday date.
My advice would be to ask your main suppliers, for example, venue (first), caterers, marquee, florist, photographer/videographer and so on to see if they are open to agreeing a back up date. If so, ask them to provide 3-5 available dates in a time period that you are happy with and then use all these dates to find a date that works for the majority of your suppliers. This is what we secured for ourself, our original date is July 2020 and we also have a back up date in September 2020, just in case our July date does not go ahead. Our back up date was agreed at the end of March and it most definitely relived some of the pressure during a very stressful time.
Step Five: Reassessment of your Wedding Date
After working through steps 1-4 above and giving yourself a little time to take a breather from the wedding pandemic stresses. After some time has passed, it is time to reassess whether you think it will be possible to go ahead with your original wedding date. When working through Step 4 above with the suppliers, agree a date between you all, that you will reassess whether or not your original date will go ahead. For us, we agreed a reassessment date that was 2 months before the original wedding date.
When your reassessment date comes close, take a look at the news, assess if there is any further news as to when Britain or your chosen wedding venue country is going to come out of ‘isolation’ and/or be able to travel. In addition, be sure to assess what the country’s ‘isolation exit strategy’ is:
- What will their ‘post-isolation life’ look like?
- Will ‘social distancing’ still be enforce?
- Will there be a ban on gatherings over a certain number of people?
Answering the questions above will allow you to truthfully assess not only will the day be able to go ahead, but also will you and all your guests truly be able to have the best day and celebration of your love. So much of your heart (and money!) goes into planning your perfect day, so make sure you choose an option that is truly going to honour that, as after all you only get to do this once.
Alternative Options
Even if you are unable to get the day that you have planned, for example, your date is unable to go ahead and you are unable to rearrange for a date this year and you are adamant that you wish to get married this year. All is not lost, there are other options available to you – and the thing to really highlight here is, even though you may not feel like it (which is the hardest part), you do actually have a choice.
You can choose an alternative that works for you and your partner – discuss what this could be between each other as ultimately, most of all ,the importance of your Wedding day is the bond that you are creating between yourselves. You are committing to each other – it is that moment in time where you make those commitments, which is undeniably your special moment – no one can take that away from you.
I have popped some alternative choices you could choose/work with below.
- If the government are not allowing ‘large gatherings’ can you scale back the numbers to allow for your wedding date to go ahead? If you do go for this option, remember you could always do something bigger for a 5 year ‘wedding vow renewal’ or organise a large dinner party for your wedding anniversary the following year.
- If social distancing is to continue after isolation is lifted and you are unable to have a gathering where everyone can truly have fun, why not just go for a small church/registry wedding with you and your partner and two witnesses? Then at a later stage in the Winter, hire a venue/restaurant to throw a wedding celebration dinner. It may not be what you had originally wanted, but it could be something very beautiful because you celebrating despite of the obstacles and as an added bonus, it would most likely turn out to be cheaper.
Final Thoughts
During the process of working through the steps above and whatever the final outcome may be, it is always important to remember all of the positives that have led you to be in the position to be working on your wedding day. When you are in the abyss of stress and disappointment, it is very easy to forget the most amazing reasons why you are in the position you are in. So when you are feeling down, stressed or disappointed about the current situation of your wedding day, recite and remind of yourself of all of the below, to help revive your mindset and to focus on the good that will come of out of this all.
- You are loved. You are loved deeply. Deeply enough to be in this very position for another person wanting to commit to you in front of all your friends and family, promising a lifelong partnership with you.
- You are in good health, you have a good enough health to be in a position to be considering and organising your wedding day.
- During this extremely lonely time of isolation, you have a partner, a lifelong partner, to spend your time with, comfort one another and provide each other with support. Something that many people do not have during this time and who are undergoing isolation by themselves or in an environment which is not safe for them.
- You will eventually, come what may, get married. Whichever way you do get married – it will still be perfect – it will be perfect for you.
- Have faith in the universe, believe that everything always happens for a reason and yes, all will work out in the end.
“Forget all the reasons why it won’t work, because in the end Love really will conquer all”
– Natalé Beckles