Who else is disappointed about their Covid wedding?

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Thank you, Kayse. My wedding is in 10 days! No one from my side of the family will be there except for my daughter (MOH) and my son (BM). On my fiance's side of the family, his mother will be there, but none of the siblings and IL will be there--only several aunts, cousins, and uncles.

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Thank you for such empowering and kind words, we need more posters like you.

Kari, I am so sorry you felt disappointed about your big special day. Sending you a big hug from afar. While I am not yet married, our wedding is 4 months away, and I was hoping for a long while that everything would be fine by the time May rolled around. As we all know, things are worse now with still no end in sight, even with a vaccine, and I am worried for everything you mentioned exactly. Not having family come and the people closest to me be able to attend. Not being able to hug. Having to wear a friggen mask. Not being able to really celebrate. I have been planning my shower with my maids of honor and just spoke to my mom today who said likely we will have to cancel it. I think her saying that was a big realization and almost like a slap back to reality. I am officially stressing about my wedding not really feeling like it will be the wedding we planned. I want to stay positive, of course, but I know I will have all the feels that we paid extra to have this beautiful 50-acre wedding venue for a large outdoor/indoor wedding only to have potentially 25 people in total and wouldn't even be able to celebrate together.

I sometimes feel I am being a little selfish...but then I remember that everyone gets this day and dammit we all deserve OUR BIG DAY. The way we hoped. The way we imagined. Besides all the people we knew would be at our sides cheering us on.

I hate that so many of us got robbed of the wedding experience we were all so excited about. It's truly unfair. While it will not replace your experience, I hope you do get a chance to celebrate properly with your partner and loved ones I hope we all will

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So appreciate this post

Hi Kari,

I have been struggling with a similar experience. The night before my wedding day there was suddenly a national shutdown and the venue called and said I will have to cancel my wedding. Imagine steaming your dress all excited for the day ahead and getting that news, it was gut wrenching. Needless to say I spend the entire night crying. In the morning the officiant informed us that we can have the ceremony in the church but no reception. Although I felt relieved that I was going to be able to be married I couldn't help but mourn the wedding I had planned for over a year. My husband and I had been together 15 years before we got married so I really wanted to have a huge celebration with all of our friends with lots of food, dancing and laughter and that did not happen whatsoever.

So I do understand your disappointment and you are not alone. I honestly felt like the rug was ripped from under me.

View Quoted Comment I can’t even imagine. I think about the first covid brides often. The rest of us had time to regroup on plans, but I cannot fathom what you, your groom and families experienced. I’m so sorry this happened to you. ❤️

I totally get you! We had a mini wedding just at the courthouse and I cried in the evening because I was so sad about it! I wanted us to just go to the courthouse in our jeans and not tell anyone that we are married (we had to get married to help with some legal things) because nobody on my side could come since they live further and weren't allowed to travel but my mother in law wanted it to make it into a party and in the end we had a wedding with just his parents and siblings and none of mine and I felt really sad. We had to have someone at the wedding to be witnesses because of the state law so I agreed on his family being there but I now wish we just chose a couple of his friends to come and sign the papers and leave without any fuss.
During the actual civil ceremony when I was saying "I do" I was laughing and smiling but afterwards I felt some emptiness. I really regret having done that, I wish we had just secretly eloped and continued calling each other fiances until our next wedding (we are planning on having a church wedding this year).

Which clearly doesn't mean that I don't love my husband and don't think it is important to be married to him, but now I feel like we have gradually sloped into marriage and didn't have one big special day when it happened. In one of the other posts with a similar topic someone wrote that she was pregnant during covid and couldn't do things that other moms do and everyone told her to just be happy that you have a healthy baby, but yeah of course, she still wanted to have what other moms have. We all still want to have some of those little extra things in life.

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Oh Ann, I'm literally crying for you I just can't imagine this happened to you, I am so sorry.

We still haven’t been able to have our beach photos taken since our seaside wedding location was cancelled, once by COVID-19 and then by a huge storm six months after that.. Hopefully we can do it by our first anniversary next month. Beautiful wedding anyway back in March 2020, outdoors on the lawn of extended family church with 8 in attendance.

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Oh this is awful. I am so sorry this happened to you. I really feel like I don't have the words and cannot imagine what that must have been like. Thank you for sharing.

I do hope you can celebrate in the future in the way you wanted. It definitely won't be the same, but your lasting love deserves to have a party with friends, dancing, and laughter.

Virtual hugs!

My covid elopement was strictly a legal endeavor. We didn't even exchange vows. We went into the county clerks office and signed paperwork and that was that. I'm happy to be married, but I can't WAIT to start planning the vow renewal xD. You're not alone.

Kari I am so sorry for you. This must be so hard. It really sucks when things dont work out the way we planned. Hopefully with more time the sadness and anger will fade. Again I'm so sorry. Maybe there is a way for a reception redo in the future where you feel so excited?
Ignore the ignorant comments from others shoving their "wonderful" small weddings in your face. You are allowed to feel sad, allowed to feel disappointed and you are not alone.

Please do not be disappointed. I attended a covid backyard wedding in Sept and it was very nice. It was small, Intimate the food was good and everyone had a good time. You can make your own and make it special

It was good to see this post. We got married on our original date of July 5th. We had been together for 9 years at that point and were planning on starting a family immediately after getting married. We were supposed to get married in California where he is from but we live on the east coast close to my parents so we got married in my parents backyard. His family was going to fly in but 5 days before they started having travel quarantine rules, that said they'd need to quarantine for 2 weeks. So my husbands parents and siblings didnt come and instead watched on zoom and it was just my parents and some people my parents wanted to be there. The day just felt empty and without meaning and I think I'm more upset that my husband was alone on his wedding day than he is. Looking at the photos was hard for me. Its 8 months later and I'm still sad about it, and I wonder if I'll get over it, if I'll be able to be happy for other friends/family who get the wedding they wanted, or if having a postponed celebration will fix it. But on the plus side, I'm also 8 months pregnant.

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I'm so sorry your wedding was not what you wanted. I suspect some of the negative feelings will subside with time, but some will probably linger. I have all the same worries you do about whether or not it will ever not hurt and be sad and whether or not I'll be able to enjoy any weddings in the future. I'm starting to feel a little more hopeful now that vaccines are ramping up and it almost seems like we will eventually be able to celebrate, but I'm still worried people will just get careless and the new variants will spread and we will be in no better shape six months from now or next year. I'm just trying to do what I can to be smart and safe and socially responsible and really hoping others do the same, and also trying to take each day as it comes, which is sometimes easier said than done.

Congrats on your little one on the way. That is SO exciting! I'm so glad that even if the wedding wasn't what you wanted you were able to conceive right away and your dreams of starting a family are coming true. Best of luck to you in your marriage and parenting journey!

It is so great to see this post. We were in the midst of planning for our wedding when COVID hit and after several months of deliberating, we decided to plan a mini wedding with under 20 people. It was a beautiful ceremony and I was so happy the whole day.


But I am so close with my family and only my mom was there. I don’t have any first cousins so my aunts and uncles were all excited when I got engaged and none of them were there. We went to a couple really small weddings of our college friends and we couldn’t even invite them to ours.
It’s hard because there was so much to be grateful for that day (and in general with Covid, we have been very lucky). And I get a lot of joy from looking back at photos. But at the same time, I can’t help but feel hurt when I see other people planning the wedding they’ve always wanted, or even seeing people getting to do a bridal shower or a real bachelorette, which I didn’t get.
Hearing I’m not alone really helps! All of our feelings are valid. I love any good excuse for a party, so I can’t wait to have an anniversary celebration in the next couple of years. Part of me feels selfish for wanting to do that when other friends will be getting married for the first time, but so many loved ones couldn’t share in our joy. And I know i’ll feel more complete when they can. ❤️

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Thank you for sharing. I hope your anniversary celebration is wonderful whenever you can do it, and think many will recognize its your chance to have the celebration you couldn't have for your mini wedding.

We're in the process of trying to figure out what is possible for our celebration this year and I've just felt pretty defeated sometimes. Yesterday was particularly hard. Seeing your response was just what I needed today.

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So glad my response helped! I agree that many will see it as us having the chance to have what we didn't get to originally.

More and more of my friends are getting fully vaccinated (included myself!) so that gives me quite a bit of hope. But I hear you. When things are so uncertain, it's hard to move forward. Which is exactly why we went for our small wedding in the end. I wish you best of luck trying to figure out a celebration this year! Hopefully soon we'll know what's safe.

I feel this so much. My husband is really frugal and doesn't want to spend money on a second wedding. We have a baby on the way now so I get it, but I'm still bummed. I didn't get a real bridal shower or a bachelorette party, either. I'm happy I married my husband but sad about everything I missed out on.

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Your feelings are so valid! We ended up having a wedding celebration a year later which helped a lot, but it still didn't have the magic that having a legal/celebratory wedding and reception all-in-one would have. Many of the people we invited (mostly my friends) didn't come, so it was a bit smaller than anticipated and largely people we see all the time anyway (more local friends and associates vs our closest friends) but cost similar to what it would have if it had been the wedding we originally planned with our nearest and dearest all there. I feel like we did what we could, but there is still very much a sense of loss over what it could have been. No pre-wedding events or parties for us either.

Congrats on the baby on the way! That was a huge stressor for us in whether or not to have a celebration or not, as we're in our mid-late 30s at this point and running out of time. We've been TTC since the beginning of the year with no luck so far so that is another layer on top of everything. Finally having the legal marriage and the wedding celebration out of the way has provided some closure though, and at least I feel like I can focus on the future more now. I hope you are able to have a baby shower and smooth pregnancy and that starting your family has all the wonder, joy, and celebration that your wedding didn't get to have.