Even If We Do Postpone....

You have made the point that has been eating away at my mind for the past week as well. I'm a June bride too. My fiance, who is a fourth year medical student, strongly suggested that we go ahead and get married on our original date. Our backup date is in October, but we don't want to have to deal with all of this emotional heartache again if October is still an issue. We're getting married on our original date, and then we'll have a ceremony in October to bless our marriage in front of our guests followed by our reception as planned. I'm still going to wear my dress and my veil because I want that moment and I think that our guests will totally understand, considering. The one thing about all of this terrible stuff is that because of the circumstances, I think that brides can get away with breaking any sort of "wedding norm" that they want to. These are crazy times. lol

I’ve been wondering the same thing. I keep seeing brides on here who are postponing their May weddings to July and August, but I wonder if that will even be far enough out. This thing is still getting worse every single day, and from what the medical experts are saying, we haven’t even hit the worst of it yet. And even worse, they are saying there’s a good possibility it will plateau or decline, then just spike again in the fall. So really, what dates in 2020 are even “safe”? Right now I am trying to remain optimistic that this will all be past us when our wedding day rolls around. But if not, we are going to postpone to 2021 just to be safe. It will be super disappointing having to wait another entire year (especially because we decided to have a 2 yr engagement to more easily save money and plan the wedding), but I really don’t want to have to continue worrying and rescheduling multiple times. Hopefully it won’t come to that!

Honestly, I would postpone until mid/late 2021. And those days are filling up. No one knows for sure what will happen, but there should be a vaccine by then. They said 12-18 months, and that would give you that 18 month buffer. Especially toward the end of the year. If people would *actually* quarantine rather than selfishly (in my opinion) having large gatherings anyway (and posing with masks for fun that our medical professionals are DESPERATELY in need of) this should peak and begin to slow down. My advice is to pick a new date in 2021 fall/winter, love it, get stoked for it, and hunker down with the love of your life.

I know it's hard to tell at the moment what the course of the virus will be. i truly want to believe that by the summer it would at least have some sort of normalcy back in our lives. but i do think it is safer to look more towards end of this year in fall or winter maybe or early next year at the least.

This is why I straight out canceled. I didnt want to keep moving my date. One heartbreak was enough!

View Quoted Comment The only thing is that it may resurface in the cooler months and spike again

View Quoted Comment This makes complete sense. It's just heartbreaking Thanks so much for the advice though!

View Quoted Comment I definitely get that! Whats your wedding plan now? Courthouse?

View Quoted Comment I agree completely! Holding out hope over here too!! 🤞🏽

View Quoted Comment You're right! I think wedding norms can go out the window with this situation! Good luck to you too!!

View Quoted Comment My dad actually officiated a small wedding last weekend for us! We do still plan to have a wedding celebration later once this slows down and we go back to a normal life. I still want my vision for a wedding and we are confident that it will happen eventually. Postponong to a new specific date was frightening though. After seeing the progression in other countries, I was not confident that this virus will just lift itself from the earth in due time. Lol

View Quoted Comment I love your positivity about all of this!!! Thank you! ❤️

Here's the thing - when/if you postpone to really depends on where you are in the country. To be safe as another poster said, it would be best to get married and then have the larger celebration and ceremony later.

From the scientific point of view (I studied microbiology as part of my degree program): We are testing more so the number of confirmed cases is going to rise. The disease in and of itself is generally mild - its the same kind of virus that can give you a cold. But because your body (and the rest of the population) hasn't seen this virus before, its harder for your body to fight no matter your age. That's why all of the restrictions - to ease how many people have the potential for severe disease at one time, especially with a population as large as the US. Higher density areas are going to have more problems given that the virus was circulating before detection in the US. Also, since people have become panicked about it more people are crowding into hospitals to be tested so then when severe patients come in, hospitals don't have enough room for everybody. At this point, the virus will likely resurface. But, because a greater proportion of the population has immunity the effects won't be quite as severe.

I hope this helps some.

View Quoted Comment This does help!! Great points!! It's been awhile since I studied microbio before hygiene! My wedding is actually in MN and, likely because of the more remote area where our wedding will be, there are much fewer cases there and things are much more stable there than in other states. We may be ok all things considered. My biggest concern is putting people at risk even if we reschedule 4-12 months from now :/ I hope that immunity of the majority population will kick in at that point.

I’m a December bride and have been thinking of this too, I’m also in the medical field.



From everything I’ve seen/researched and read, we are not at the peak of this yet. Yes, we are seeing a growing number of positive cases due to increased testing. This is not a bad thing; this is expected. The number I tend to focus on is the fatality percentage (I know this is morbid, but that’s the number that matters with everyone freaking out). Right now, the US looks pretty good with the ratio of number of cases:mortality. However, 80% of these cases are “active” meaning we can’t determine if that number of people are recovered or succumbed to the illness yet. In the next 2-3 weeks, we will have a better grasp on what our true mortality rate is and how well we are doing at controlling the spread.
Also, many people say this virus will clear up when warmer weather comes in; not necessarily true. Other counties (China for instance) are in different hemispheres and they don’t experience seasons at the same time we do (when it’s summer here, it’s winter in Australia, for example. Don’t quote me on that, I’m not a geography expert).
Many experts caution that we will experience a “rebound” of cases once restrictions are lifted after this initial wave. This is happening in China, BUT the rebound does not necessarily mean we will go on lockdown again. It is expected that this will happen no matter what country you live in.

Unfortunately there will not be a vaccine ready for 12-18 more months. I do not foresee us having to follow all these restrictions for that amount of time. I could be wrong, but I hope I’m not. My expectation is that international travel will be more affected than domestic travel.
I hope this offered some insight (and that it was somewhat positive!). We will get through this together.

View Quoted Comment Thanks!! This really did help so much!! I didn't fully understand which numbers to consider and when to consider them. This gives me something to focus on when making our decision! I'm thinking international travel will be affected longer too! That's why we're thinking of changing our Grenada honeymoon to Hawaii. We shall see. We'll decide by first of May!

I think it would be smart for the government to extend the shelter in place and the quarantines. I think another month of shelter in place may be helpful so those who are just barely showing symptoms can be rid of the virus. It would be smart to continue to limit social gatherings for the next month after the shelter in place ends. There is an increase in cases because of increased testing. I think that its possible for the virus to stay around for even up to next year but I also think at some point the spread will lessen and fewer cases will come up. (Keep in mind that in 2008/2009 H1N1 was a world wide pandemic just like now but now H1N1 is a common strain of the flu that pops up even still to this day 10 yrs later. The H1N1 strain is also included in the yearly flu vaccine) When will this happen? We dont know that. Lets hope by the summer things are better. My original wedding date was April 4th. We are shooting for a courthouse wedding on June 4th. We are postponing until possibly the fall, I would really like to move it to late summer but might not be possible and maybe not a good idea.


Im not in the medical field but my degree is in microbiology and chemistry. At first i was really upset at the media for creating straight hysteria. Even now I dont agree with the medias coverage of the virus when it first started to get serious. They were not informative, there were lotss of unanswered questions, there were no statistics, and the media only told us the virus was spreading and ppl were dying. Now a month later we know a lot more information.
The flu kills more ppl than covid19 but this is Not the same virus as a common cold (rhinovirus) and this is Not the same as the seasonal flu (influenza virus). Coronavirus is Not new but the strain of coronavirus which is covid 19 IS new. The statistics are showing us that there is a LARGE percentage of young ppl 18-50 that are getting sick. Some are dying even tho they are young, healthy individuals, but those that are older are at highest risk. For SOME the virus is mild for most they are getting really sick. The biggest issue right now is the extreme lack of resources due to influx of cases and impacted hospitals. If the rate at which the virus spreads slows down there might be a higher survival rate (possibly).

I really hope things slow down and everything will be okay. Lets hope by the fall we will be ok.

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Glad I could help some. There is a new model just put out by the University of Washington's School of Medicine. I don't have the link right now, but could find it again if you would like. Anyway it is showing the national peak to be in mid to late April. There's gonna be some people that are at risk until we have a vaccine, I think we need to hope that a good chunk of the population will have immunity to help prevent severe instances of the disease rebounding and peaking again.

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Hey fellow science bride - animal scientist here! A couple of serious questions for you since I'm a bit fuzzy on my coronavirus stuff (we didn't talk about it as much in the medical micro class I took)

1. Given that 2 of the 4 human coronaviruses that cause common colds are also betacoronaviruses, is there any indication that there is either of partial cross-immunity or catalyst for more severe disease?

2. Is the assumption that almost 80% of cases will be mild not correct? Obviously with a novel disease there is a greater chance that the body's immune system will react negatively to the virus.

Also, I'm really glad to hear someone else say the media's coverage has been less than helpful.

View Quoted Comment I honestly wont be able to give you a good answer to that as im not exactly qualified. And your right there are multiple possible viruses that cause the flu but my main pt was this strain isnt the same as those. Im guessing there IS a possibility of cross immunity because im sure there are carriers of the virus that have no symptoms but how do we know unless we have statistics of antibodies from those that are tested. As far as being a catalyst for severe disease (im not fully sure of ur question) but what we are seeing is pneumonia, respiratory failure, and liver and kidney failure.


I think the assumption of 80% of mild cases is incorrect but I could be wrong. My take on it is there its probably a smaller percentage of mild cases, also we need to evaluate what we consider as mild and in reference to what? Mild as in a mild case of the flu? I dont think this is it. Maybe even at its mildest, covid19 is worse. I have been seeing ppl recording their experiences from being positive with covid 19 and im not sure if i can consider it mild, all I know is it seems pretty tough on the body even those that are young and healthy.