If these don’t define 2020, I don’t know what does.
Holy hell. Now that I’ve emerged from wedding planning during a pandemic, I can return to my true love of sharing my shenanigans on Giggles.
Where were we?
Oh yes. My wedding getting postponed four times, cancelled, then me deciding to get bootleg and throw it in the backyard?
Let’s begin.
From the despair of March-June wondering if the venue would be able to host us, to then negotiating new dates with the terms social distancing, masks, cap on attendance, to them then eventually saying, “we love you, but sorry you can’t have your wedding here and no one else can for the rest of 2020.”
This broke Carms, aka The Mother of the Bride.
Like broke.
My morale collapsed in March, her’s in June.
We had postponed to four different dates; Our original date was 4/3/20, to then 8/7/20, to then 9/12/20, to 10/3/20.
We moved vendors, guests, and emotions during these pivots.
When we were moving forward with 10/3, we negotiated what could be defined as a wedding we were comfortable with:
- Guests were not required to wears masks
- Dancing needed to happen
- Minimum attendance was 120
We went through two weeks of back and forth revisions with lawyers putting this into a contract. I’ve never heard the words force mejeur more in my life.
We all came to an agreement on the above, and we signed it.
The next day, the venue cancelled all events for the rest of 2020.
Since March 15th, I had known that the wedding was not going to be at our OG venue.
Carms and Jordan still had hope.
After countless bottles of wine, an inordinate intake of carbohydrates, frequent tears when discussing the wedding, I had already mourned my OG dream of getting married at the beach.
When I say mourned, I had grieved, the hours put in, the time it consumed, the vision I created, my wedding deck!
I also had major reflection points—I’ve spent the past year and a half planning one day. What was my life? Who am I? Was my wedding my purpose? You can only imagine the spirals I had at 9pm after my second glass of pinot.
All that work. Gone.
Remember, COVID cancelled our wedding two weeks before it happened, so we were ready to go.
I can only imagine the poor souls who planned Coachella 2020.
Yes, I just compared my wedding to coachella. It is on the same level.
I also wanted to drop a serious note here—I realize how lucky I was that I was able to have an engagement party, a bridal shower, a bachelorette and really get to have “the bridal bliss” time. I know that so many brides did not, and I really want you to know I feel for you. I cancelled one day, I can’t imagine having to cancel all of your pre-created events.
Shifting to 2021 wasn’t an option. City hall was closed (get ready for the marriage certificate drama later), churches closed, all venues risky in LA, Orange County lawless.
There was only one place that felt right.
One theme that I knew I could replicate.
It was then, that I rebranded our Beachy Black Tie wedding to The Royal Wedding on Rossmore.
*Before you panic, we slashed the guest list to direct family and bridal party only and required negative COVID tests for those who attended.
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