First off, I want to extend an apology to anyone who has had to reschedule their wedding. This was such a heart breaking decision for myself. Coming so close to getting the day you have always dreamed of and watching it slip away is devastating. While most won’t understand or relate to what you are going through, some may see this as silly or insignificant, I do understand and I want to be there for you! Over the past month I have find myself feeling guilty for getting upset. In the grand scheme of everything going on, it is so small but it is also a loss of something that was very special to you. You do have every right to be upset.
While rescheduling your wedding seems like such a daunting task, especially since it feels like you basically are replaning all over again, I wanted to share the 5 steps I took to reschedule my wedding. It was helpful to go through and write down what these steps were before starting. I sat down and made a to-do list of everything that needed to happen to reschedule this day. I put together this blog post of what I wrote down and hopefully this will be helpful guide to those who need it.
Step 1: Once you have come to the conclusion that you need to reschedule, grieve your day. I took one full day to be upset about it. I needed to let all the emotions out about the whole situation before I could move on to rescheduling. It is okay to take a moment to be upset. Personally I found taking a day to be miserable/upset/frustrated/mad/annoyed helped me in a lot of ways. It helped me refocus my attention on why we were having a wedding and what was actually important to us.
Step 2: Reach out to your venue(s) to start the process of rescheduling. See if they will give you a couple different options. I am not going to lie this had been a big pain for me. Unfortunately, the dates I wanted weren’t available anymore and the only choice was to pick one from a list of dates they were offering or lose our money. (We did get wedding insurance but it was going to be a very painful and drawn out process to get our money back.) I have heard from a lot of brides that some venues are being a lot more flexible than others. If I am being honest (this is coming from the stand point of the bride), you are paying a lot to have your wedding at their venue so I do believe you should get what you want. Now, you do have to understand that these venues are businesses and some are better prepared financially than others to take a loss. Find things you are willing to compromise on but stand for other things. Being candid here, we were not willing to have our wedding date on a Friday but we didn’t mind picking another season or year. Talk with your significant other on what would work best for you both and your families.
Step 3: Once you have come to an agreement on a new date with the venue(s), get working on those “Change The Dates”. I will share ours from Shine Wedding Invitations once we get them in but we kept it really simple. The top said “Love Is Patient” and then the body told our guests what the new date was and that they could RSVP for the new date on our wedding website. Our original wedding invitations were really over the top with a full RSVP card (will share the original invites at some point) but for the change the dates we simply asked our guests to use our website. Get them out as quickly as you can so guests can make rearrangements especially those that are planning on traveling! Also don’t be worried about making this so formal. Pick up the phone and call/text your guests that you know have made travel arrangements.
Step 4: Contact all your vendors to let them know of the change in date. We were given a couple different dates before picking one from the venue so I reached out to my most expensive vendors to make sure they had any of the dates open. Fortunately, they were all open to any date so we picked one we wanted. I would highly recommend checking with your most expensive vendors if you can (photographer, florist, videographer, DJ, etc.). If they don’t have those dates open then you might just end up losing your deposit. I keep an excel document with all my vendors that has emails and details for each. I typed up an email and sent it out to all my vendors to make sure they were aware. In the email be sure to ask if you need to sign a new copy of the contract and what their reschedule policy is. (some do charge for a change)
Step 5: Go through and readjust your wedding planning timeline. I use the wedding wire app to track all the tasks that need to be complete by the date. Go through all your tasks and adjust the timeline of them so you can continue to stay on track for your new date. I felt so much more organized after I did this. It also made me realize how much more time I had to really plan everything out which was a relief plus a huge benefit of pushing our date back a little bit further.
Articles To Read
If you are looking for more help, I used this article from Brides to help answer some of my questions about steps to follow. I used this article to understand what “Force Majeure” meant and what this looked like in the case of COVID-19. Another article from Brides was really helpful to read so that I could see what other couples were asking about right now.
Thankfully all our vendors were really flexible with the change in date. Some did ask for half/full payment by the original wedding date which I didn’t think was unreasonable. Hopefully your vendors/venues are as understanding about this whole situation as mine were. I know emotions are running high (Trust me. I yelled at someone on the phone and felt horrible about it after.) but try to stay level headed about what is going on and understanding of the other parties involved.
Let me know if you have any questions in the comments below! I would love to help in any way that I can as I know this is a frustrating and stressful time for brides.