If you follow my socials you’ll know that I have been riding the, emotional rollercoaster, or the Coronacoaster as it is now known, along with my couples, not just because of the impact to their wedding plans, but to the potential impact on my own. Last week, like so many other 2020 couples, we took the plunge and decided, to postpone our wedding to 2021.⁠ This isn’t the end to the Coronacoaster, but it certainly feels like it’s starting to slow down.

If you’re still hoping to get married later this year, then I write this to give you some reassurance. Similarly, if you’ve already had to postpone, then hopefully there’s some comfort in knowing we all feel pretty much the same about the situation….

Stationery: RubiandLib at Etsy

Stage 1: The Meltdowns

When this was all kicking off, I wrote a blog post that summarises this whole stage.

Essentially it’s the constant weight of will or won’t our wedding be able to go ahead? Feeling hugely optimistic one day, only to feel completely negative the next. Moments of crying, multiple pity parties and a lot of interrupted sleep.

Every bride I’ve spoken to has felt this way, for several weeks if not months, and it is not a fun place to be. At this point, all I can say is it does pass.

Stage 2: Accepting the Inevitable

There comes a point when you accept your wedding will need postponing. For Alex and I, this came at different times. Perhaps because I’m so immersed in everything due to my work, or perhaps because his way of handing everything was to remain as optimistic as possible (or bury his head a little), but I came to terms with the fact our wedding would need to be postponed a few weeks earlier than Alex.

I think the final straw for me was when I woke up one morning to a text from my best friend, and maid of honour, who is currently living in Australia, to say her flight had been cancelled.

Cue the floods of tears into my cereal bowl.

This was the day I knew we’d need to postpone. In my mind, there were virtually no glimmers of hope left, and it had become inevitable that the wedding wouldn’t be possible, at least as we had planned it to be, in 2020.

It was a crap day.

Stage 3: The Bright Side

Once the huge wave of sadness has passed, this is when you start to look on the bright side. For the first time I was starting to point out the positives to postponing, rather than desperately trying to go ahead with it, albeit a bit half-heartedly due to the circumstances.

We’d have longer to save, some guests who couldn’t make the original date may be able to attend on the new dates, the earlier time of year meant we’d avoid the peak August heat etc.

I also gained considerable perspective back at this point. I think a big turning point for us was when Alex and I were out on a walk chatting through our options for what was probably the 100th time, “if I was giving birth right now, you would potentially have to miss the birth of our baby, and that is something you could never get back. We may have to wait to get married, but at least we still get the experience we planned. We could be in a worse situation.”

We had always known there were worse things happening in the world than us having to postpone our day, but I think this was the first time we actually felt it. Waiting a few months longer than we intended didn’t change us, our relationship or our love for each other.

Stage 4: The Commitment

We had accepted postponing our wedding, but we weren’t ready to commit to the decision just yet. There was still the occasional moment of ‘what if there’s a vaccine?’, or ‘what if antibody testing is really game changing’. At the back of our minds we didn’t want to postpone too early, to then find our day could have gone ahead on our original date. That would be the worst.

We had a call with our planners, and together decided that we would wait until the end of May and then we would make a decision, having a cut off date to make a decision felt good at this point.

I can’t recall what changed, but a couple of days later when sat having dinner Alex just looked at me and said “what are we waiting for? Why don’t we just do it?’“. I think I’d been waiting for him to say that, one of us needed to or we may have been hanging on in limbo way beyond our decision date.

Pretty much there and then we emailed our planners and asked them to proceed with the postponement.

Stationer: Pingle Pie

Stage 5: The Relief

This is the part I write to all brides who haven’t yet made a postponement decision, but may still need to.

I cannot tell you how much better it felt once we had made that commitment. All my brides who had already postponed were telling me the same thing, but honestly it is true.

Almost instantly the weight had been lifted. I knew it had been getting me down a lot, but I realised just how much the whole thing had been playing on my mind as I instantly felt lighter.

We both watched the daily news briefing with a totally different perspective. I found I was no longer hanging off every word thinking ‘what does this mean for our wedding?’.

I’ve slept better than I have in weeks, and have actually managed some lie ins again!

Most importantly, the excitement has come back. If we were going to proceed with our original date I would have spent the next few months worrying constantly about a second peak, backwards steps with regards to lockdown etc.

No one wants that during the build up to their wedding. I want the build up that brides are meant to have…friends excitedly texting me about dresses they’ve found to wear, the alteration appointments and time with bridesmaids, the hen party of course! Overnight, I got all of that back.

I won’t lie, it is still gutting. When you’ve been planning a wedding for a year to 18 months, there is so much emotional investment that it sucks to delay it. I think there is a little bit of mourning the original plans that still comes in waves. We communicated our postponement to our plans last night (as I write this), and that was hard. It made it real, our wedding really isn’t happening this year, but I know that time flies and the day will come around before I know it, and in the meantime, I get to enjoy being a bride-to-be for that little bit longer.

So trust me, if you do have to make the postponement decision, the overwhelming feeling you will get when you finally do is a positive one.

A past bride of mine sent me a piece from a blog a Boston based planner (Always Yours Events) had written, and it seems a fitting ending to this post….

“The history of our world is made up of great love stories. And weddings are a result in the profound love we have for each other. You as a couple are the story, while your wedding tells the story and celebrates it — not the other way around. The date, the time, the venue and the guest count can change, but the heart and the story will always remain untouched because you are the story. No matter what changes occur, your original stunning wedding WILL morph into another stunning wedding. It will be remarkable, and the memories will live on and on and inspire generations to come.”

Photo: Cecelina Photography