Turn your Wedding into an Elopement
Elopement Weddings
It’s hard enough these days understanding the rules and trying to follow them. I am on my 6th week of self isolation and 7th week of not shooting weddings. It’s been difficult to reschedule everyone but I have slowly and surely managed to do it. I miss my job and hope that everything can return to normal soon enough but in the current climate it doesn’t look likely. I still have my rescheduled wedding booked in for the 30th of September 2020 for 40 guests and Im keeping it that way til a month before when we will make out final decision whether to go ahead of not.
So I wanted to reach out to those who have bigger weddings. What can you do in the current climate to make your wedding go ahead? Should you downsize and do something smaller? Can you do both? Here are a few options below to give you some ideas on how to tackle your big day.
Eloping
If you are lucky enough to have wedding insurance and your venue is closed due to corona virus you could enquire about making a claim and receive the money back for your wedding. Insurers may try and get you to reschedule but you don’t have to. It means that you start again with a blank canvas. Second time planning means you might not be as excited as the first time, or you may have got carried away and overspent or you are seeing things in life a little more differently and don’t want to spend as much money as last time. Eloping doesn’t have to be just the 2 of you, you can have a small party of 10-15 people. You can chose to get married where you want, by yourselves or surrounded by your close friends and family and then have a private dinner either at home or in a restaurant/hotel. Your dress and outfits will still get used, you can still get Make Up and Hair, Flowers etc. but this gives you the possibility of taking the stress out of the whole planning part. Your photographer could still take you for photos and you could go somewhere thats meaningful to you or has a stunning outlook, no need to stay near the venue. There is a lot of flexibility.
Here is a couple who chose to get married at Glencoe, Scotland.
Reschedule your date but do something memorable on your original date
I touched base about this in another blog - Ways to Celebrate your Wedding at Home - basically rescheduling your whole day to another date later on in the year or 2021. Your venue and suppliers should be happy to accommodate this, be wary if your moving into 2021 as there maybe price increases in catering etc. You may have to take the hit and pay for these. Myself and my fiancee chose to exchange rings at home and do a photoshoot but we will hopefully have our real date in September 2020.
Us getting married at home.
Do Both!
Can’t bare to disappoint friends and family but still want to get married? You can Elope but also just keep your rescheduled wedding going. You could organise for just the two of you and a few witnesses to go either get married in a fabulous location (in Scotland we can get married wherever we want) or sign your paperwork (in England you still need to be in a specific location i.e. registry office to get married). This means that you are officially married in the eyes of the law and have that extra security of each other if anything should happen in the foreseeable future. Then you can continue with wedding plans as normal and just have a day of celebration with friends and family. You can choose to do the ceremony as a blessing and crack on with your full wedding day or you could choose to do an evening celebration with buffet and band/DJ and just party with all of your friends.
This Couple got married in a recreational area in Charleston, South Carolina with just 5 members of their family.
It could be that elopements become the new normal and a shift in the wedding industry has started. Already in America we have seen couples cancel their big lavish weddings and getting married on the rooftops of their apartments, riverboats, back gardens etc. the UK could follow shortly. What is most important is that you do it the way that you want to. Friends and family need to understand the choices that you make and you shouldn’t feel guilty about changing plans. Whatever you decide to do you can always count on your wedding photographer to go along with your plans. We absolutely love abnormal ideas, weddings that a different and quirky, we can even help with the planning.
If you are an existing client of myself, I have created a deal so that if you want to get married or do something special on your original date but still want me to photograph your rescheduled date then please get in touch with the details and we can plan together.
Happy Wedding Planning!