My husband and I planned out our entire May 30, 2020 wedding before Covid hit. We dropped our invitations in the mail on an ordinary Monday in March and by Friday that same week everything was shutting down. I spent most of March, April, and May entirely stressed out, crying, depressed, not sleeping, and started seeing a therapist. We ended up canceling our wedding but my mom was diagnosed with cancer just 10 days before our wedding was supposed to be, so we decided to elope on that date at the last minute with just our parents and a few friends in attendance so my mom could be there. We put off the bigger event until the following year.
Our elopement weekend was so stressful. Everything was shut down due to Covid so we had to host people in our house Friday-Sunday. My husband cooked every single meal for everyone three days, I shared my 90 square foot bathroom with three other women getting ready for my wedding, and even on our wedding night we had people crashing on the floor and couches in our house so it was not private or romantic or relaxing at all.
We had a super small outdoor ceremony with our guests just standing - we did our vows, cut a cake, offered out champagne, and danced to the song we picked for our first dance. The entire thing was maybe 40 minutes. Our photographer came and took photos but we mostly did just couple photos because we expected to have our bigger (60-80 guests) wedding later, so we didn't even get couples photos with our family. I have some photos of me and my mom and my husband took a couple photos with his parents but his mom was very worried about Covid so they all look pretty uncomfortable standing close together. We also had a person who wasn't even invited to our wedding (my mom's friend, who drove my mom to our place because my MOH decided she wasn't comfortable doing so at the last minute) come to our super tiny, private elopement, and I'm still mad about it. My husband's own sister wasn't there (she couldn't get out of NYC due to Covid), nor were a couple of his groomsmen, because we were limited on gathering size and couldn't include them.
We rescheduled all of our vendors for June 12, 2021 and yesterday I heard from our venue and they do not anticipate being able to hold weddings next year because of all of the restrictions in place. So we have three options: 1) we can have a super small, masked, socially distanced, no dancing event of no more than 24 people (cost of using the venue would be the same), 2) we can postpone to 2022, or 3) we can cancel altogether, get a partial refund from our venue, and forfeit deposits for our other vendors.
We have no desire to have a masked and socially distanced wedding - to us being able to dance, hug, and mingle with our guests is important - so I'm actually relieved our venue is reaching out and not forcing us into keeping our original contract on the new date. Having the option to postpone further or just bail out and get some money back is great, but still, I feel sad and disappointed and just so let down by this whole experience. We saved a ton of money to have the wedding we dreamed of and a lot of features of our venue are less important for a "wedding celebration" than they would be for a first time wedding. People also seem to have gotten used to the idea that we are married. While many of our loved ones are still looking forward to celebrating with us, some (particularly my MOH) are giving the impression that whatever we do doesn't matter and isn't important because we are already married. I don't want to have a wedding that people don't treat like an actual wedding, and it's difficult to know if it's worth it anymore.
I'll also be 35 next month, and we wanted to try for kids but we're really torn about how everything is shaking out. I'm planning to have a chat with my OBGYN at my next appointment (in just another month or so) and asking her for advice about the risks of having a baby during a pandemic vs waiting and having a baby older, even when I'm already considered a geriatric or high risk pregnancy (I lead a healthy lifestyle but my age is a big factor). Part of the whole reason we wanted to marry this spring was so we could have one last big vacation (honeymoon) and then have at least a full year to try for a baby. My husband thought we'd still have the wedding before having a kid, but clearly that timeline no longer works. Some of the things we loved about our venue aren't things that would be as great with a baby in tow, but there's no guarantee that will happen either, so I don't want to be making a bunch of "what if" decisions. I'm just tired of dancing around hypotheticals.
Oh and my mom is still undergoing cancer treatments. At some point I'll have to take time away from work (and stay in my childhood home several states away) to care for her, but we don't actually know when that will happen. So that's stressful too.
I'm am so disappointed that this is how it all turned out. I've never had a single celebratory event in my life realized. I've never had big birthday parties, my parents weren't able to see me graduate from high school because my HS couldn't do basic math when allocating tickets, my dad died just a couple months before I graduated from college, and we skipped the pre-wedding parties in favor of what was supposed to be a grand wedding celebration. I am so glad my husband and I got married in spite of everything (but we definitely would have done it differently), and I am so incredibly lucky to have him and we are fortunate in so many ways. Sometimes its just really difficult to get past all the trauma and not feel super down about it.
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