In this episode, I talk about what I would do if I were getting married during a pandemic and how I would celebrate my big day if I was getting married in the middle of one. I know that a wedding is a big celebration and you want to celebrate it with everyone you love and who loves you, but now it s hard to do that because of the coronavirus.
00:00:00.000Hello beautiful ladies and welcome to today's video where we're going to be talking about
00:00:04.360what I would do if I were getting married during a pandemic.
00:00:10.120Jacob and I had about six weddings planned for when this pandemic hit and all of them have been
00:00:17.280either rescheduled or just completely postponed and it's been really crazy to see. I can't imagine
00:00:24.100what these brides are going through, how hard it must be to have all of these plans in place,
00:00:29.300to be celebrating your big day, and for them all to get cancelled because of coronavirus. I just
00:00:33.820my heart goes out to all of those brides out there who have had to deal with this, who are
00:00:38.660working through it now. I actually am still going to hopefully three weddings in the next few months
00:00:44.180which is great. I'm really excited that they're still getting married and that they're doing it.
00:00:48.180That's going to be great. Of course there's still going to be safety measures in place and all of
00:00:51.900that but it's nice to know that some people are still getting married even during all of this and
00:00:56.300we did have a few friends who decided to just keep it very small and then reschedule a big party for
00:01:02.360next year. So I really wanted to share with you guys what I would do if I were in this position.
00:01:07.600I really do feel lucky that this didn't happen when Jacob and I got married but if it did I hope I
00:01:12.880would have been able to come to terms with it and then have an awesome day despite the fact. So I'd
00:01:18.500really like to talk about what I would do if I were in this situation so let's get into it.
00:01:22.500The first thing I would do is postpone the reception. Now I think that that's the hardest
00:01:27.260part because a wedding is. It's a big celebration. It's so much fun and you want to celebrate it with
00:01:32.660everyone you love and who loves you and you want to have that big party but now it's really hard to
00:01:39.400do that and I know some brides who are going ahead with their wedding but they're only getting like
00:01:43.520half of the people that they love there and I know that that would be very very hard for me
00:01:48.000so I would rather just postpone the reception. Have the reception later when everybody can be there
00:01:53.760and it might be a year after you're married but you would still get to celebrate it because the
00:01:58.000fact of the matter is most of the people who would come to your wedding are going to come to your
00:02:01.980reception a year later and they didn't get the opportunity to celebrate it when it actually
00:02:05.880happened so they're going to have a great time at your reception no matter what. So I would totally
00:02:11.540wait and have a reception a year from now because I would want everyone I love to be there.
00:02:16.840My family isn't super comfortable traveling right now so if I were getting married this summer I don't
00:02:21.120even know if they'd be able to come so it would be much more exciting and fun for me to just postpone
00:02:26.900that reception and have an amazing party a year from now. That's what a lot of our friends are doing
00:02:32.040and I totally respect that decision that's probably what I would do too. Number two is to have a small
00:02:37.020ceremony so this is really more dependent on you on your family on your ritual laws and because I know
00:02:43.160that my parents probably wouldn't come in the middle of a pandemic I probably wouldn't want
00:02:47.420any parents there because that would just be really hard on one set or the other that they
00:02:52.560couldn't participate. So I would probably just line up all of the things I would need for a Jewish
00:02:56.960ceremony and I would try and just keep it small keep it contained and just make it about each other
00:03:03.640make it about your love make it about the fact that you are starting a life together. It's interesting
00:03:09.100actually because in Orthodox Judaism you're not allowed to postpone a wedding even if something
00:03:14.300bad happens even in a situation like this you're really not allowed to postpone the wedding because
00:03:19.420marriage is so important and that's what it is for me is that marriage is the most important thing
00:03:24.940not the wedding not the party but the life you get to live with your spouse now and that is the
00:03:30.620thing that I wouldn't want to put off I would want to be married I would want to be a wife and that
00:03:34.940is what I'm waiting for and the party is amazing and it's lovely and I love weddings so that is not
00:03:41.080to say that that's not important but it is secondary to what the wedding is for which is your marriage
00:03:46.840and the funny thing is that when Jacob and I had our civil ceremony our legal ceremony in the states
00:03:52.180it had to be about three months earlier than our actual wedding just because we weren't really in
00:03:57.600the same place at the same time and once you get the contract it expires within a certain length of
00:04:02.440time and so we had to do it much earlier than our actual wedding and because for us that's not what
00:04:07.480defines our marriage for us the wedding ceremony that mattered was the Orthodox Jewish ceremony but
00:04:13.500the civil ceremony was still something that was kind of fun and I looked forward to and it was
00:04:18.340incredibly small and incredibly casual I just bought a short white dress Jacob wore a nice suit his
00:04:24.340parents did end up coming but my parents really didn't care about the civil ceremony so it wasn't
00:04:28.180something that upset them that they couldn't come my teacher from Manhattan School of Music did the
00:04:32.400ceremony because she was ordained in New York and I had a pianist friend play the piano at our wedding
00:04:38.860ceremony and it was just very small and very moving and I loved it and of course again that wasn't our
00:04:46.160main ceremony our Orthodox Jewish ceremony but we did kind of do the small ceremony thing and we loved
00:04:52.480it and it meant a lot to us so I am a huge proponent of having a small ceremony now be married get married
00:04:59.800that's what I would do the third thing that I would do is take beautiful pictures so this is something I
00:05:06.260regret from our wedding day not a real regret not a big regret but a little regret was that it was really rainy
00:05:12.140outside so we couldn't go out and take amazing beautiful pictures like the ones you see your friends take and are all
00:05:18.260over their house and have incredible albums of it we have very nice pictures and I love our pictures but not as many as I would have liked and I'm a very outdoor person if I could have gotten
00:05:28.260married outside I would have but we got married in spring in New York so that's a 50 50 shot with rain and it did end up raining so good thing that we didn't get married outside but that meant we didn't take any pictures outside and that's something that makes me kind of sad looking back and if you're going to have a small ceremony I would take five hours and just take amazing photos since your reception isn't going to be for another year take some of that budget and just take amazing pictures that day of you and your new husband
00:05:58.260in the world all the time that you need wear the gown that you bought for your wedding that you now need to postpone and wear it to the ceremony and wear it for the pictures you're going to have all this time really take advantage of it and take incredible photos that is totally what I would do if I were postponing my wedding now if we're talking about what I would do number four is that I would probably elope somewhere that I really wanted to go now this is really more dependent on how comfortable you
00:06:25.260are with traveling right now but if you are comfortable then I would elope somewhere beautiful maybe bring a few friends but I would go somewhere where we could really spend the whole day celebrating an easy example would be going to Florida and going to Disney World for the whole day getting married and then going to Disney World that sounds like a ton of fun or if you're more into sightseeing maybe go to Savannah and just spend the day seeing the beautiful sights there after your wedding get married in the morning and then have the whole day
00:06:55.240celebrate or get married in the evening take pictures a lot of the day and then also take your time to explore I think spending the entire day with your new husband is just the nicest idea because you get to actually do something really fun make the day special make it something that you'll never forget and a normal wedding day isn't really spent going out and seeing things it's really mostly prep it's mostly getting your hair and makeup done waiting for everyone else to get their hair and makeup done taking photos with everyone in the family making sure everything is in its place
00:07:25.220and it's still lovely and beautiful and of course everybody loves their wedding day but it's a lot of just preparation and if you aren't doing that then you might as well go do something amazing and fun that is totally what I would do if I was getting married during a pandemic the fifth thing that I would do is do my hair and makeup or get my hair and makeup done I probably would go to dry bar or something and just get my hair done in a really nice blowout or something fancy because I will say I do like doing my hair but it is time consuming
00:07:55.220for people I like doing my own makeup so I would take my time do my own makeup do whatever look I wanted to do and then get my hair done for this small ceremony even if it's a small ceremony that's still going to be your wedding anniversary and you're going to remember it and you're going to have all these pictures that you want to get taken and so if you're going to be taking those beautiful pictures you might as well get your hair and makeup done or do your own hair do your own makeup whatever makes you happy but just spending the time to make those things beautiful
00:08:25.220ceremony in that evening so I would plan a beautiful dinner I would go to my favorite restaurant and I would order everything on the menu that I wanted and if any of my friends had come to that very small reception I would invite them to come to and I would just have an amazing dinner at a really cool place if it's someplace near you then choose your favorite restaurant if it's someplace that you guys are new to and you're exploring I would just choose whatever restaurant sounds the best to you who cares about the price when it's your wedding day
00:08:55.220just having the kind of food that's going to make you super happy and remember this day forever and make it special because how often do we get to eat at restaurants that are a little bit more pricey or a little bit more fancy but if you go to a restaurant that you would never normally go to it'll be so memorable and if you're wearing your wedding gown how much fun would that be am I right like how much fun would that be if you just walked into a restaurant in your wedding gown with your husband and maybe your friends that would just be so much fun
00:09:25.220I would probably have champagne for the table and just get a bunch of appetizers I would just really celebrate that day to its fullest and have that delicious meal after the ceremony the seventh thing I would do is order a cake now of course you're not going to want to order a huge wedding cake because those things are really expensive but you can still order a pretty cake from someplace that's smaller maybe just for four or five people or if you're having more than that ten people and just get a beautiful cake to finish it off with
00:09:55.220and so you can still do the feeding each other cake things that would be so nice and so fun I might even just get an ice cream cake if that was what I was in the mood for it and that's what I would do but whatever cake makes you feel bridal and very celebratory that's the kind of cake that I would get if I had to have a small ceremony because of the pandemic because I'd still want to have that feeling of cutting into my wedding cake on my wedding day with my new husband feeding each other the pieces of cake that was a fun part of our wedding that we really enjoyed
00:10:25.220and even though I didn't choose a very fancy wedding cake I loved our wedding cake it was very simple they just kind of did layers of buttercream around the edge and they put some flowers it was really pretty and I would just get something similar for a small ceremony to something that we could still cut into and still celebrate and still enjoy and the last thing I would do on my wedding day is go to a jazz place that has a big band or something like that and dance to the music now of course I don't know that anything is necessarily going to be open but in some places
00:10:55.040that stuff is opening up and when I was in LA there was a place called the cicada club that I loved because it was a themed 20s to 40s era jazz place and they would bring in these big bands and people were swing dancing it was amazing and it made me so happy I loved going there plus people would dress up they would put on the costumes or they would just get fancy and it felt like you were stepping back in time I loved it that is totally what I would do on my wedding day because I would still want to dance on your wedding day you dance it's the most
00:11:24.900fun you can have and if you're not going to be having a big reception on your actual wedding day then at least going somewhere where you can dance and celebrate would just be so much fun and the last thing I would do if I was getting married during a pandemic is plan an amazing reception for a year from now I would take the time to really have a perfect reception day because here's the funny thing Jacob and I got engaged and I planned our wedding in about five months which is pretty short when you're planning weddings a lot of people will
00:11:54.880take about a year to plan a wedding and I only had that short amount of time and my whole life I had all these ideas about what I wanted my wedding day to be like I had all these plans I had picked up all of these magazines I had read every article I knew everything I wanted to know about weddings and then when I got engaged to Jacob all of it went out the window because I didn't care I just wanted to be married to him it really surprises me even now that that's how I felt
00:12:24.880I didn't matter the details because we were getting married and we were going to spend our lives together and that was what counted but when you've already done the wedding ceremony and it was smaller and it was really just about you two then you can take as much time as you want to be detail oriented about the reception because it really is just a party it's not just about you guys getting married and who cares because it's your love
00:12:54.880and you'll have a full year or maybe more to really do something that everything is exactly how you want it rather than just we want to be married we're going to make that happen and if everything doesn't fall exactly into place that's okay which was how I felt even though our wedding day was beautiful and perfect and honestly everything did fall into place everything didn't turn out to be as important as I thought it would be
00:13:24.880whole hog make it amazing and that's what I would do to all of those brides out there who are going through this I am so sorry you have to it's really hard when this happens and it's not fair to you and I hope you have an amazing wedding day whatever you choose to do I have no judgment about what you would choose to do about this for your wedding day because there are no right answers this is what I would do this is what I think I would probably do if I was in this situation but the fact of the matter is I wasn't in this situation so I don't know what I would do
00:13:54.420so if I were in your shoes just do what you want do what makes you happy and have an amazing amazing wedding day let me know in the comments if you're going through this what you're doing I'd love to hear your guys's stories and thoughts thank you so much for watching today's video please subscribe to my channel and blog if you haven't already head over to my Twitter Instagram and Facebook and follow me there hit that notification bell to get notified of all my new videos hit that like button please head over to classicallyabby.locals.com if you'd like to support my channel see more of this content and be part of our community
00:14:24.420and I'll see you guys in my next video. Bye!