A personal experience of how we faced the fact of having to postpone our wedding 3 times!
“We are 2 weeks away from our wedding date, we have all vendors covered, all planning finalized, every single detail checked, but… an obstacle has just hit our reality… the pandemic!
Yes, just as you hear it, Andres and I had eveything planned for our wedding at a beautiful hacienda in Queretaro which was going to take place on Saturday, March 28th, 2020 and were expecting about 300 guests. We had already made final payments and all of our guests had their flights confirmed. This was a destination wedding, so most of our guests had to purchase flight tickets to get to our wedding and not only that, but they had already made hotel reservations and tour sights reservations.
Well, all of this got completely paused for a couple of days as we did not know what to do, we wanted our guests and vendors to be safe and at the same time we did not want the guests to lose what they had already paid for. We didn’t know if it was necessary to actually posptone or cancel the wedding.
It wasn’t an easy decision, Andres and I were frustrated because we couldn’t believe everything that we had worked for was going to get lost.
We took our first step which was talking to our vendors and our closest guests such as our parents and siblings. We asked our vendors if they were flexible on changing the date. We really did not want to cancel our wedding so negotiated with them and they agreed on postpoting the event without any penalty as long as it took place on the same year. This was a huge relief and according to the hacienda’s availability Andres and I had to choose Friday, October 16th, 2020.
Having this aspect covered we then had to inform our guests. This was not going to be easy for them and honestly, we thought some might feel it rude. However, all of them were very understandable and actually thanked us for postponing it. We realized they were also feeling insecure about traveling and this definitely showed that we had made the right decision.
Well, everything was covered, all vendors had sent us their “change of date addendum” including the hacienda and we were hoping that by that date things would have gotten better.
But NO! That was wrong!!
It was May 25th, our guests had already changed their flights and suddenly we get a message from the hacienda saying that we had to change our date again.
Here’s what happened… the hacienda has rooms for about 100 guests. As previously mentioned, it was a destination wedding so most of our guests had to pay for rooms in the hacienda or in external hotels.
They had already made lodging final payments and these were supposed to be active for the new date, October 16th. But the hacienda had to make several changes to its calendar and some things got mixed up with the lodging availability. We don’t blame them, the pandemic created chaos amoing everybody… The issue now was that our guests didn’t have a place to stay!!!
We talked about it, thought about our options, and sadly had to change the date again. NO!!
This meant having to change the date to our vendors and our guests ONE MORE TIME!
Upset, Andres and I made an announcement to our guests and once again, they understood and changed their flights.
The new date we chose was November 28th, 2020. Long story short, by October we realized the pandemic hadn’t changed as we would’ve wished so we were not going to be able to have it on November 2020. Guess what?…. You’re right, we had to change the wedding one more time!!!
We didn’t know whether to cry or laugh, there had been so many changes that we didn’t know what to think. At the end, Andres and I talked to our guests who have been the most supportive and they were the ones who recommended us to postpone it again. Well… now we are waiting to have our formal reception on 2021.
By the way, this will now be a vow renewal ceremony because I forgot to tell you that we did get legally and religiously married on March 2020 at one of the beatiful beaches of Cancun. It was an intimate / pop-up wedding because on Thursday the 19th of March we had to arrange everything to get married the next day.
I personally was afraid of feeling it empty as our original guest count was 300 and only our parents and siblings were going to be there.
However, that was the most perfect day! We felt so much love around us. I didn’t expect it would be so lovely and sweet. It made us value each other more and reminded us what the most important thing was… having each other side by side and starting our new family!
We are now waiting for the “party” time, but hey! we will get to have 2 weddings.
Some pictures were taken from the internet
