2020 has been a doozy of a year. COVID-19 has immensely impacted everyone worldwide, some losing jobs and others their lives. As social creatures, it has been challenging to maintain the need for separation to slow the spread of this infectious disease. Trips were canceled, graduations moved online, and weddings postponed. For us, we did not want to delay our wedding and instead decided to reimagine it to fit pandemic times. In this post, we are going to explore the silver linings of a pandemic wedding as I do believe there is always a learning or positive takeaway from all challenges, yet we do not take lightly the life-altering challenges many people are overcoming.
We have done our best to share some of our experiences throughout our engagement, including wedding budget lessons, commingling our finances, and shattering the proposal myth. However, like every married couple warned us, planning a wedding is a lot of work. Now that the nuptials are all done, this is the first of many more posts outlining our wedding planning process.
What is a Silver Lining?
A silver lining is a positive takeaway from an otherwise challenging experience. I have had many disappointments in my life, whether it be not getting into a certain school or landing that big job, that ended up having silver linings that took my life down a positive direction. I am a true believer that in life, you make decisions or life pushes you down a certain direction and the only thing to do is to make it the right direction.
Beautiful Photos 
Wedding Ceremony 
Wedding Speeches 
Picturesque Venue 
DIY Table Settings 
All the Candy!
5 Silver Linings of a Pandemic Wedding
1. Celebrate in the Moment
We originally were planning for a 220 person wedding. This was going to be an elaborate wedding and we were so looking forward to celebrating with our extended friends and family. In order to place everyone’s safety first, we ended up cutting back our wedding to just 15 people. Initially, we were overwhelmingly disappointed by this massive cut to our invite list.
However, the smaller guest list ended up providing an amazing benefit. We have been to a lot of weddings, averaging seven per year over the past five years, and one thing is always clear…the party is not for the Bride and Groom…it is for the guests. The celebrated couple ends up spending the majority of their time doing rounds at each table, graciously having small talk with their extended family they haven’t seen in 15 years. For our intimate pandemic wedding, we were able to be in the moment and enjoy all the different elements of our wedding day. There was no pressure to do anything other than exactly what we wanted to do at that moment!
2. Deepened Engagements
Along the same vein, because we had such a diminished guest count, we were able to have genuine, memorable moments with each of our guests. There was no pressure to keep speeches short, everyone was able to contribute, and the whole party stayed engaged until the alcohol caught up to everyone. We really ended up valuing the quality time we got with each one of our guests.
Not only did we get more quality time with each guest, but our guests had deeper interactions with each other. This was especially valuable for our families who were fully meeting for the first time. They were able to swap old stories of their kids and siblings, share their enthusiasm for the future, and overall celebrate together which deepened the bonds between our now combined families.
3. Bring Your Vision to Life
One of the things we found out early in the wedding planning process is that each venue has it’s quirky and restrictive rules. No lawn games, music needs to be off at a certain hour, or the party must end by 10:00 pm. Our original venue was great, but definitely had its own set of restrictions.
For a DIY smaller wedding, we were able to book an AirBNB and create our own adventure. We found an AirBNB that was not only practical in size, rooming, and amenities, but was picturesque and definitely Instagram-able.
We brought in lights, synthetic flowers, A/V equipment, and lots of food. It took a fair bit of imagination and a lot of help from our party to set up everything, but we created the perfect backdrop for our dream wedding. 2020 was not stopping our vision!
4. Create a Weekend Getaway
Because we were not limited by venue, instead of having a 5-hour wedding, we were able to develop a curated weekend getaway for our party. The majority of the party arrived on Thursday which gave us all a chance to catch up after a long, quarantine-filled year. We used Friday to set up the majority of the decorations, have some pool time, and get together for an intimate rehearsal dinner, ice breakers and all. Finally, we were able to wakeup early wedding morning, put the final touches on decorations, and enjoy our dream wedding all without leaving the property.
5. Budget-Friendly
While we had done a good job saving for the wedding, there is no way to make a 220 person wedding truly affordable. What we came to find out, even a 15 person wedding has its expensive costs. However, in comparison, the flexibility our small wedding afforded us the ability to save money on food and beverage, venue costs, and decorations. While I wouldn’t call our smaller wedding cheap by any stretch of the imagination, it was greatly more affordable than our original wedding.
This is a silver lining for so many reasons. First, it puts us in a better financial situation to start our married life on the right footing. Second, it provides us the flexibility to put some of our savings toward a larger, post-pandemic (hopefully in 2021) celebration with all our loved ones that were unable to participate in our big day.
All For the Best
In the scope of 2020, having to throw a smaller wedding is the least of our world’s challenges. Despite being a wildly different experience than we had dreamt about, it was still perfect! We learned a lot about our strengths as a couple, reaffirmed the support structure our friends and family provide, and ended up in a better financial position setting us up for a successful future…all great silver linings!
Keep tabs on all of our wedding challenges and learnings at our Getting Married course page.
