International Wedding Planning

Congratulations on your engagement!!


If it were me, I personally would plan for 2022. I postponed my July 2020 wedding to July 2022, just because postponing was a huge pain and a daily roller coaster of emotions for us until we successfully postponed, and I really didn't want to have to postpone again in 2021. However, as long as your vendors are lenient and would allow you to postpone at no cost, planning for 2021 may not be a bad idea. You might not even end up needing to postpone - everything might work out by next summer, or at least you'll already know that there's a chance you'll have to postpone (and won't be blindsided by it like so many 2020 brides were). There's also no guarantee that COVID would even be less of a threat by 2022. Choose the date that you and your fiance feel most comfortable with.
As far as my experience with vendors as we postponed, our vendors and venue were all amazing. They immediately agreed to postpone with no penalty, and worked with us to find a new date that worked for everyone. I realize that this isn't the case for everyone though - someone I know had to pay a new deposit at their venue to postpone to a new date. Definitely talk with the vendors before you book them to find out what their policies are, and book ones who would allow you to postpone in that scenario.

I would personally wait until 2022 only because July 2021 really isn't that far away and there's currently no timeline for borders reopening. I also think that vendors are going to be much less lenient when it comes to rescheduling in the future and have more verbiage around the pandemic written into contracts. Is there any way you can move forward with the Spain wedding the interim and switch the order (Spain before Chicago)? It sounds like that would allow all grandparents to attend and give you a timeline that shouldn't have to change.

Congrats! We do have an international wedding. It was originally booked for November 2020 and we postponed to May 2021. The only reason I didn’t go straight to 2022 was I simply can’t wait and plan for a total of 4 years lol. If we can’t travel safely and freely by 2021, we will elope and cancel the wedding. If I was just starting the planning and picking the first date, I would go 2022. The frustrations of re booking everything is a lot. The possible loss of money ect. The 2nd wave is here and it seems to be infecting more people. I am worried that travel bans will still be in place for sometime. We were thankfully able to move the venue date and all vendors with no penalty, but it was stressful. I have this sinking feeling may 2021 was not far away enough for international travel.

If we cancel well.....we are basically out for all the deposits with vendors and 50% loss from the venue. We just have no freakin clue what pandemic life of 2021 looks like, making it very hard to plan!

Are you willing and ready to deal with rebooking from 2021 to 2022? How many people will be coming from Spain? How will their rebooking be affected? If the travel ban is lifted, there may still be a 2 week quarantine upon arrival, and when getting home. What stresses me out the most is the guests. Some have booked flights and may be out money if I cancel next year due to covid.

Good luck, and I hope those restrictions get lifted, and trust your heart!

Congrats on the engagement! Since I’m a COVID bride and have had first-hand experience with having to postpone my wedding and all the awfulness that comes with that, I say save yourself the stress and wait until 2022. Of course it also depends on how many people you want at your wedding and who you want at your wedding who may be unable to make it due to the virus. If you want something small and you don’t have high risk family, I could see the possibility. It’s a very personal decision, but if you were OK with getting legally married at the courthouse earlier to make your life in Spain easier and then plan your formal wedding for 2022, that might be the best of both worlds. If I had known about COVID and the way it was playing out at the time I was starting to plan my wedding, I would have for sure waited, but I realize my situation is not the same as yours. It’s just that having gone through the COVID postponement route, I want to say RUN SIS

Thank you so much for the insight, everyone! As much as I'd love to forge ahead with a 2021 wedding, it's probably wisest to wait until 2022. That way we can plan a little more calmly, especially since we're planning two parties! The mere thought of how uncertain 2021 is already stresses me out, so adding an expensive wedding on top of that is probably not the best plan, haha. The fact that all my preferred vendors are available on what would be our 2021 date feels serendipitous, but they're definitely all available in 2022 as well!