10/10/2020 wedding- Covid 19

I am currently getting married in September and my fiance and I decided to keep it small and we are doing a backyard wedding. It's still possible depending on your state of residence you can look up your current governors orders and see what it allowed and what isn't. Im from Texas so in our governors orders it states you can a wedding at reception halls but it has a capacity limit of at least 25-50% of the ceremony or reception hall. So we decided to do it in our backyard and have both ceremony and reception it will also cut down on your costs . Hope this was helpful

Congrats and Good Luck

We were scheduled for 10/10/20 (symbolic to having started dating on 9/9/10) in Keystone, Colorado. We'd planned this destination reception for our friends and family following a self-solemnization on Lake Dillon. We're located in California, so we and all of our friends and family would have been flying into and booking accommodations in Colorado to celebrate.

Given than our reception was planned to be small, intimate, and would have included a handful of at-risk individuals that we desperately love (a few will-be new moms, a few older family members, and a few medically-risky friends) we have already decided to elope here in California.

We're lucky that we were planning on flying out our photographer because they are already CA-based and happily adjusted our contract to remove those travel costs (they're the best, OneLove Photography if you're in California). We're currently planning to have present: his local parents, a local officiant (since CA doesn't recognize self-solemnized marriage), and a local photographer. Only a single member of my family, my mother, will be traveling in with plans to quarantine on arrival.

We are looking to postpone our celebration to next year once there is a vaccine (~12-14 months) with a vow renewal at the same venue with those same people, just on our first anniversary. We know it will feel like a victory lap having overcome so much since getting meeting ten years ago, and somehow so much more since getting engaged. For everyone to finally come together, safely.

This is the only thing that makes sense to us, I refuse to put the people I love at risk. I wouldn't even ask that of them. The important thing for us is that we chose these people because we love them, our only expectation of them is their support and the last thing we would want is to be responsible for pain or suffering for any of them or any of their families.

I'll be going out of my way to include the small group of people that would have been invited to the reception in virtual hangouts leading up to and during our Plan B elopement. As a designer, I'm already planning small favor gift boxes to send out to virtual attendees (like confetti poppers and ring pops, etc) to get excited and stay creative.

The point of that day is for me to marry my best friend. Whether that's in our apartment in California or in the middle of the woods in Colorado, surrounded by everyone or just the two of us, I'm doing my best to remember that the most important thing will still happen one way or another.

Best of luck to anyone going through the same process. We went from having over a year to plan for a date that we knew everyone was going to think was so catchy, to having less than six months to plan it in a completely different state (where people think it's 10x trendier and vendors are 10x more booked already). I wouldn't wish the mourning and disappointment I felt for this hopefully once in a lifetime experience on my worst enemy.

Something I've seen around is sticking with me: love isn't canceled