Episode 02: How to plan a wedding during the COVID-19 pandemic
If you’re wondering how to plan a wedding during COVID-19 challenges or having to postpone your wedding due to event restrictions, this episode is for you. In this episode you’ll meet Carley Faherty, she’s an event planner based out of Tampa, Florida but she’s also a bride-to-be.
I hope you find her wedding planning tips and Plan B approach helpful because she knows first hand exactly how it feels because she’s right there in it with you and truly experiencing the same stress and emotions as you are right now.
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Connect with Carley on Facebook or Instagram.
MEET CARLEY
Ok, so my name is Carley and I run a business called Hearts of Joy Weddings & Events and it’s based in Tampa, Florida and essentially, I coordinate weddings and I plan weddings and other types of events but weddings are really my favorite. And although I’m based in Tampa, I travel and I love destination weddings. I’m also a full-time business coach.
THE BACKSTORY
It’s actually kind of a funny story. I didn’t really have that much experience in planning events or weddings. I’m a planner as a person. I like to plan ahead and make plans. But I had a coworker, about year ago, say to me, “Listen, my son is getting married and him and his fiance are both very laid back and their wedding planning process has been very chill but they really need a day-of coordinator and the venue doesn’t provide one. So I was trying to think of someone who was really organized and who could pull a day together like that and I thought of you.”
I ended up coordinating their wedding and their rehearsal and that kind of got me into it. I kind of just did it as a favor to my coworker because I’m very close with her. But I ended up really loving it. So it prompted me to start my business and to start coordinating and planning other weddings.
SHE’S A BRIDE, TOO!
I am getting married in November. So I’ve been planning my own wedding while I’m planning other peoples weddings. And it’s definitely been helpful to me to have gotten into the wedding industry before I got engaged because it’s given me the inside scoop about a lot of venues and vendors and how things work — especially when it comes to a timeline when you’re engaged. Basically just knowing the planning process has made it easier on me as a bride to be a wedding planner.
TALK ABOUT COVID-19
For me, I have a little bit of a heads up at this point that things like social distancing may look different by the time I get married or they may look the same as right now. A lot of brides didn’t really get a heads up. COVID-19 kinda came out of nowhere for a lot of brides who had to cancel their weddings.
For people who are planning right now and whose weddings are a few months out like mine, the main the is to not panic. It can seem really scary and we don’t know what’s going to happen. It’s definitely an ever-changing situation so I would say at this point, the biggest thing my fiance and I have taken upon ourselves is just having a Plan B in place — in the event that things are still the same as they are right now or possibly worse. Whatever the case may be, we have a Plan B. And for us, that just looks like a smaller guest list and I think a lot of other people should consider that as an option.
We aren’t really willing to change our wedding date. We really feel strongly about our wedding date. So if it gets to the point where we need to downsize or make some changes, then we will just cut down our guest list and keep our dream wedding, just with a smaller group of people to respect CDC guidelines and health in general for all our guests.
THE PROCESS OF PLANNING DURING COVID-19 / CORONAVIRUS
For us, we haven’t sent out any invitations or anything yet because our wedding is still six months away. But we have a plan in place to communicate with all of our guests.
Once it gets a little bit closer, especially with our guests who are traveling. We have some international guests because some of my family members live in Germany. And my fiance has family members who live all over the United States. So those family members are our first go-to for communication because they require a lot more time to plan in order to come here.
For the family members that are local, I think we’re going to wait until it’s a little bit closer and then we’ll send out communication that says either we’re still a go or communication that says we’re having to downsize our wedding due to CDC guidelines.
I would suggest, for any bride, streaming your ceremony. I think it’s a really special moment and you decide not to postpone your wedding and you want to keep your original date like we are, streaming it online so that your family members can watch is a really great idea. And I think scheduling a reception for another time is also a really great idea. You can get everyone together then and celebrate — even if it’s on your first anniversary. Just something so you get the celebration that you’ve been dreaming of even if you’re not really able to do that on the date your originally planned.
GET MARRIED NOW, CELEBRATE LATER
It’s actually quite common. My cousin did this a couple year ago. He got married but he lives in a different state than his family members and his wife’s family members and they ended up doing a second reception anyway. So I think a lot of people may feel like it’s this uncommon thing to do but that’s actually not the case. And there’s nothing wrong with choosing that as a backup plan in this situation. No guest would turn their nose up or question that. This is something new that no one has dealt with before and anything that a bride does, I think people will accept. Any kind of backup plan is going to be totally acceptable and whatever the bride and groom feel is best, that’s what they should do.
THERE ARE NO RULES.
I always say this to anyone getting married: Don’t be afraid to do what you want to do. Don’t let other peoples wedding or what you see on social media influence what you do if it’s not really what you picture your wedding day to be like. There are so many different options. There are so many different cool, unique weddings that it doesn’t need to look like everyone else’s.
Especially in this situation, it’s a really good time for people to do whatever they feel like doing. If you want to have a small wedding with just your parents and then a big reception later on — or not — just do it. Do whatever you feel represents you and your other half.
EXPLAIN PLAN B & CHANGING IT UP ONCE YOU GET “A LITTLE BIT CLOSER”
It’s unique to each engagement. Engagements are not always the same length. For us, we’re going with 60-90 days. I would say 90 to be safe. You always have the option in between the 60-90 days to expand, let’s say, your guest list if you cut it down based on guidelines. I think if you’re having a shorter engagement, that may change. If you’re only engaged for 4-5 months, you may want to be thinking about that the entirety of your engagement just because there’s so little time in between the proposal and wedding date that it could be a very stressful situation if you don’t make those decisions right off the bat.
Because my engagement was a year long, so it’s not too crazy for us to be changing things right now because we made the decisions (like the date, venue, etc.) a long time ago that we couldn’t have predicted any of this. But if you’re just now getting engaged or getting engaged over the summer and you’re planning on getting married before the end of the year I would make everyone else’s Plan B, your Plan A — just to minimize stress and flipping back and forth with decisions.
COMMUNICATE WITH YOUR VENDORS
I sent out a few emails last week to our venue because if they were planning on remaining closed through the rest of the year, that would be a huge wrench in our plans. So I would start with your venue. Without the venue, all the other vendors have no where to go. And then talk to your photographer, videographer next because those are your keepsakes. You know that’s one place where we really weren’t willing to budge on quality, which is a testament to you [Heidi], of course. It’s the most important part. You could get married in a backyard and it doesn’t matter what it looks like or where it is because it’s your wedding day and if you have a good photographer and videographer then everything else is set.
EVEN FOR A SMALL WEDDING, HAVING AN EVENT PLANNER IS IMPORTANT
A lot of people misconstrue the meaning of an event planner or coordinator. Our goal is not to take over your big day and make all the decisions. It’s to take the stress way from you as the bride. When people don’t know where to go, the coordinator takes care of it. Your wedding day, regardless of how big or how small, it should be an extremely happy, stress-free experience and that is my goal. That’s my number one aim is to make things as stress free as possible.
Having a relative plan and coordinate the day of is a common go-to for brides. They think oh, my aunt is really organized, she’ll just do it. But I think it’s really important to have a coordinator that’s completely separate from the situation. A planner main focus is to coordinate and to take care of any kind of problem before it even happens. Whereas a family member or friend, their main focus is the bride and groom getting married. They are there as a guest first and foremost. They are there to celebrate. Sometimes when you choose a family member or friend, their focus can kind of get taken away from coordinating and it’s a lot easier for a bride to get stressed out along with them.
But a coordinator is working. They are there to put out fires and fix any problems. When the dress needs fixing, the coordinator is there. When I’m there, I’m scanning the room all day long just to make sure everything is going smoothly and that the bride — even when something goes wrong, because things do — that the bride never knows about it.
TOP THREE PIECES OF ADVICE AS A BRIDE
Your engagement should not be a stressful experience. Every girl dreams of that big proposal and as soon as I got engaged I was so overjoyed and that feeling should sustain until your wedding day and throughout your honeymoon and all that good stuff. Your engagement should be happy and amazing and anyone who gets in the way of that, don’t let it get to you.
Don’t be afraid to think outside the box. I really want to make the point that your wedding day should look exactly like you want it to. It shouldn’t be what your best friend thinks it should look like or your sister or your grandma - whoever. It’s your wedding and you get one shot at it and it should look the way you want it.
Don’t sweat the small stuff. It sounds cliche but it’s true. Things may not go exactly how you planned but sometimes that turns out even better. And honestly, nobody as a guest remembers. Ninety percent of the things a bride or groom thinks went wrong, nobody remembers. I can look back at all the weddings I’ve either been to or coordinated and the littlest things that the bride and groom stressed about I don’t even remember — whether it’s food or one centerpiece didn’t make it on the table — whatever it is, it’s just details. And while I totally agree that details are some of the most important aspects of the wedding day, there are also JUST details. The point is you’re getting married and it should be the happiest day of your life and the rest are just details. People should focus on the marriage and the wedding will fall into place behind that.
Connect with Carley at Hearts of Joy Events on Facebook or Instagram.