Everything You Need To Know About Postponing Your Wedding

With all the craziness of COVID-19, you might be a bride who is faced with the unfortunate reality of having to postpone your spring or summer 2020 wedding. We know how stressful (and upsetting) this can be, especially after all the time and effort put into planning your perfect day. But just remember that no matter what day you get married, it will still be one of the best days of your life!

As the situation surrounding Coronavirus rapidly changes, it’s important to pay close attention to your local ordinances and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) when trying to determine your wedding postponement plans. To help make things easier for you, we’ve put together a guide on everything you need to know about postponing your wedding.

Keep reading for more tips on how to postpone your wedding and an exclusive 20% off discount code on Change the Date cards from Basic Invite.

1. Organize The Information

First things first, you’ll need to pull together all of the information for each of your vendor partners. If you’re a member of the Client Lounge, good news! All of that information is conveniently located in your portal. Another simple way to organize this information could look as follows:

• Create a Google workspace to house all of your vendors’ information.
• Create a Google doc sheet with columns for Vendor Name, Category, Point of Contact, Contact Information, Contract and Notes.
• Save all of your vendor contracts to your Google Workspace and then copy the contract link, pasting it into the Contract column of your doc.
• As you reach out and set a game plan with each vendor, highlight their appropriate line, and enter any applicable note items from your conversation.
• If you’re communicating with your vendor by email, consider saving a copy of the confirmation emails to your Google Workspace for easy reference.

2. Check Your Contracts

Next, you’ll want to review each contract for their specific cancellation and postponement policies. Due to the varying nature of each business, cancellation and postponement policies are not the same across all vendor categories. There are vendors who may have the ability and flexibility to reschedule your wedding date without additional fees. However, there are others who don’t have that same ability and need to assess those additional fees. It’s important to note that, to bring your dream day to life, we are working with small businesses and that those folks have homes and families they also have to support.

While this vendor community across the board is working to be as understanding and accommodating as possible, we need to recognize why a business may have to enforce their contract and extend grace when that is the case. Before we approach them around how they are moving forward with rescheduling, we need to understand what the contract in place outlines.

3. Determine New Date Range

Consider the reasons you are having to postpone your special day, and what additional time frame might you need. Make sure to give yourself plenty of time to pick up all the moving pieces of your wedding and shift them to a new date. Look into months that are generally less saturated, as they may have more available options; these months generally include August and December – March. Also, consider days that aren’t a traditional Friday or Saturday. Thursday and Sunday options are awesome to consider! They are generally less booked (for now!) which means a higher probability of retaining your entire original vendor team.

4. Reach Out To Your Vendors

Have an open and honest conversation with your vendors if you are looking to postpone or reschedule your wedding. Over-communicate as you start to finalize details, and stay in constant touch with them to ensure no piece is overlooked. We recommend reaching out in this order:

1. Planner (if applicable): Go ahead and bring a planner on to the team right now, if you have the flexible funds. This person is there to support you through this chaos and help seamlessly transition the details. Start here and you get to skip the next few steps!
2. Venue: Start with your venue first and discuss with them the new date ranges you are considering. Take note of four or five new dates they have available, but don’t book the new date yet! You’ll want to reach out to the rest of your vendor team to retain as many of them as possible. Canceling a service may come with additional fees or loss of funds paid so far, so trying to keep your vendor team together should be a priority.
3. Photographer, Cinema, Entertainment, and Separate Ceremony Location (if applicable): These vendors generally take only one wedding a day and will have less flexibility when it comes to rescheduling. Offer the new dates to this team of vendors and see which dates best align for them.
4. Catering, Florist, Stationery, Beauty Services, Rentals, Dessert, Attire, Specialty: This grouping of vendors generally have the ability to take on multiple weddings a day, or even a team behind them, which makes rescheduling with these vendors slightly more convenient. Once you have a date that works well for the previous vendors, reach out to this list and confirm that it also works well with their calendars. Remember, sticking to off-months and days will allow an easier transition of your vendor team when rescheduling your wedding day.

Communicate Info To Your Guests

Finally, you’ll need to communicate this information to your friends and family. Ideally, time is of the essence here. If you’ve chosen to postpone your wedding day, you’ll want to let everyone know as quickly as possible. If you are working with one of our fabulous local stationers, this step can be as easy as reaching out, confirming a Change the Date card order and done!

Send Out a Change the Date Card

If you don’t have a stationer on your vendor team, that’s ok! We’ve created this Save the New Date card just for you. We’re working with our friends over at Basic Invite to make postponing your wedding a breeze! They have such great Change the Date options to personalize and make your own. After you download your Save the New Date Card below, you can upload your design here. They’ll even print your uploaded guest names and addresses complimentary!

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20% Discount on Change the Date Cards!

We know an additional set of cards is just another unexpected expense you weren’t expecting. So we’ve partnered with Basic Invite to offer 20% off your orders using code LovelyEvents. Keep this code handy! This is a standing offer, good for any of your wedding day items, future announcements, showers and more.

Still, have questions, or need more personalized assistance trying to postpone your wedding? We are here to help! We got you, lovely.

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