How do you postpone your wedding? It’s actually fairly simple.
Step 1: Take A Deep Breath.
Here is a post I never thought I would write.
Even before the lockdown was announced, we were quietly muttering to ourselves that the wedding might not go ahead as planned. With the number of people allowed to attend gatherings getting increasingly smaller and smaller, the thought certainly crossed my mind.
More often than not, however, that same thought would swiftly be pushed away, our wedding was a good 3-4 months away… We’d be fine.
Or so we thought.
Now, I want to make it clear we were very lucky that our wedding wasn’t planned for March, April or even May. I’m incredibly grateful for that and cannot imagine how stressful, heart-breaking (and not to mention expensive) it must have been for those couples.
That said, whether it’s due to COVID19 or other personal reasons, when it comes to postponing, you’re wedding… where the hell do you start?
I’m a firm believer in letting people know where they stand, so as soon as we made the decision to postpone the wedding we contacted all of our suppliers… It was basically just a short message to let them know that although we didn’t have a new date, the wedding wouldn’t be going ahead as previously agreed.
As many of our suppliers were freelancers, it felt important to let them know asap, so they could re-schedule/plan their finances etc accordingly.
Next, we contacted our venue and tried to secure a new date.
With regards to Coronavirus, nobody really knows what is happening so the official advice in our area was to push it back until Autumn/Winter and see what happens. Needless to say, we ignored this advice.
Whilst we desperately want to get married, we didn’t want the hassle of possibly messing around our guests and suppliers a second time, so instead, we pushed the date back a full year.
Once we had our new date, we contacted all of our suppliers and checked to see if they were still available and if we could move our date without it affecting the payments we had already made.
We were really lucky in that only our photographer was unavailable for our new date.
If your suppliers are unavailable check you contracts and have a look on Which? as we found that many of the terms used in the contract were not legally enforceable anyway.
For example, a “nonrefundable deposit” doesn’t actually exist. If you give the supplier enough time to get new clients, there is no reason why they should not refund your money. We decided not to argue the point though, as obviously it was highly unlikely that they would be able to secure new clients given the Panny-D.
Either way, we learnt a lot from Which? And it’s definitely worth a look.
After our date was secured we posted a message on social media and contacted all of our guests individually too just to make sure everyone was aware.
I’m not going to lie, it felt horrible to send that text, so maybe make sure you have a lot of wine nearby.
One thing I wish we would have done sooner is to check with the registrars. I dread to think what would have happened if they weren’t available on our new date! However, I have been reliably informed that many work on a locum basis so they can easily draft more into the ranks if needed.
As our new date is over a year away, we will have to get a new marriage licence, however, definitely check this with your local registry office as this can vary from place to place.
Finally, don’t forget to contact your insurance company!
If you’re now planning your wedding for 2021, don’t forget you can find advice on booking your venue here.