Most of us have never weathered a time like this. For couples, this may be your first time planning a wedding at all, let alone adapting your wedding to a worldwide health pandemic. Small business owners have never had so much uncertainty rock the core of how you choose to sustain your business, all while holding space for the real-life implications for your couples. This is hard for everyone, and the hardest part is that there are no easy answers or win-win solutions. We are all experiencing some level of grief — anticipatory grief about an uncertain future, a lost sense of safety about the present, and a level of acceptance yet to be fully embraced. Everyone grieves differently and, rather than pretending to have answers, we decided to write an article about what REAL LIFE COUPLES are doing to adapt to the changing road map of COVID-19 practices. We hope this reaches anyone who needs it and, in the absence of answers, provides examples that you find useful to move through uncertain times.

SCENARIO 1.

The Governor’s mandates for large and small gatherings changes every day. You want to be married to your partner because you’ve been planning for over a year, your original date is less than three weeks away (at the end of March), and you want to make sure you share health benefits and medical decision-making rights. Most of your guests are from out of the state or out of the country and, while you had originally planned a large celebration, RSVPs are dropping off daily and your guests feel guilty for cancelling. That is the last feeling you want your guests to associate with your wedding day. You also feel personally responsible for your guests’ health and safety and know that safe social distancing will be impossible at your event, even though the venue is moving forward with events and reassurances at this time. So what do you do?

This couple decided that the importance of their ceremony took precedent; they wanted to move through these times as a unit and prioritize their marriage, rather than risk waves of further travel restriction and service shut-down. So while restrictions and best practices were increasing every day, we planned an elopement two weeks prior to their original date for a small group to gather in the park on a Tuesday. We were able to adapt the services of the planner, officiant, photographer, videographer, florist, and cake-maker in the span of three days. The couple felt pessimistic about conditions improving in such a shot period of time based on the spread of the virus, and did not want to put their marriage or guests at risk should conditions worsen.

The day before their elopement, the Governor announced the mandatory shut-down of all restaurants and bars (which included the venue) and prohibited gatherings under 50 unless they met the health and safety protocols for COVID-19. In this case, Force Majeure went into effect in their venue and catering contracts and released all parties from their obligations. The couple received a refund in full and, while a cancellation is an unfortunate outcome, recouping the value of a large portion of their investment was a small step in a positive direction.

We as their planners finalized the elopement details for the day following and touched base with all the team members. We worked with the officiant to secretly gather small “toasts” from friends and family via email to include in the ceremony. We scheduled pick-ups and drop-offs, as well as downloaded the couple’s wedding songs to play DJ during the ceremony. On the day of, we harnessed the power of technology so that immediate family members could witness the ceremony via video chat. The photographer filmed the whole ceremony to share with family and friends at a later date. After, the family on site walked to a park with a view of the city for family photos at sunset. While these measures were no replacement for the physical comfort of their loved ones or the original vision of the celebration, it was the small details that made the ceremony complete.

We respect that this couple held their marriage as the priority. While postponing their celebration was an option that all vendors made available, this couple ultimately decided that they just didn’t have the bandwidth to set a second celebration date. Their wedding was to be held during the peak of uncertainty where the landscape was changing daily. That is a lot to emotionally calibrate and re-calibrate for yourself, let alone for a hundred friends and family members who had planned to be in attendance. We as their planners had the task of cancelling the remaining vendors and negotiating final fee and reimbursement terms. It’s never the outcome we want, but it’s a part of the service we render when needed. We are particularly proud to have worked with this couple because, being mindful of their decision to support small businesses, they insisted that all creative vendors retain their payments. They felt it was more important that their support team survived these uncertain times and be financially acknowledged for their effort and adaptation, rather than doing a “true up”. Of course, many of the vendors on their team refused to keep the funds and/or compromised on a middle ground, in which case the couple donated all reimbursements and the total of their Honeyfund to local organizations as their way of financially contributing to their community at this trying time. We are proud to have been in their corner and inspired by their client leadership.

SCENARIO 2.

Your celebration is at the end of May — the beginning of summer and three months out — and the decision-making landscape is changing daily. An integral member of your wedding suffers from a permanent health condition that puts them in the “at-risk” population for COVID-19. For this reason, you imposed self-quarantine on your family two weeks prior to the first wave of at-home work orders from major technology companies in the area. You practice safe social distancing, even out on nature trails with your dog and other hikers. While there are no government mandates directly applying to your date (yet), you anticipate that conditions only have a small chance of improving by your wedding. Your 120 guests have received invites. Your goal is to provide your guests with enough time to either book their travel or cancel existing plans with minimal fees. What do you do?

This couple was fantastic about reaching out proactively and expressing their needs and constraints for their celebration. They were super clear that safety is paramount, both for their guests and their family, and that anything that puts the the health of friends and family at risk is out of the question. They were also super clear that it’s important the two of them get married this year and that they were willing to postpone the larger wedding as planned until the year following. They partnered with us, their planning team, to put together a “Plan A” and a “Plan B” as work-from-home measures were taken in mass in their city. “Plan A” was to hold the celebration with safe social distancing and proper health precautions taken throughout the weekend. “Plan B” was to postpone the celebration to a similar time next year and plan a small elopement of <10 people for the same date this year. We proactively communicated with their guests via email that we were monitoring the situation and would send them an update with two months of notice to make or change their travel plans.

In the meantime, we reached out to their venue to inquire about available dates for the following year and to put a hold on a date just in case “Plan B” was the safest option. We also scoured all of the existing vendor contracts for their postponement and cancellation policies, as well as inquired for any special provisions their vendors were making in light of the pandemic. The good news? All contracted vendors had a postponement clause and were happy to reschedule at a new date for little or no fee should we need to move the celebration. Even more good news? The photographer and planner in their corner spoke the language of weddings and elopements and were happy to reformulate their contracts and fees in order to accommodate an elopement this year and a wedding next year, should that be the case. Knowing what the road ahead looked like under either plan was very settling for the couple as they entered their “hold and breathe” period to watch how the pandemic developed.

At the two month mark, we had our scheduled video chat to make a final decision. By that time, government restrictions on mobility had increased by another layer: people were only allowed to leave the house for critical errands and services and were required by law to remain 6’ apart at all times. With an increase in restrictions and an ability to extrapolate the timeline, we acted on these vendors’ generous postponement policies and rocked Plan B. All the vendors were able to move their services to the couple’s top 2021 date choice, which we activated on after our careful communication and pre-planning with little or no fees for each vendor. The couple was then free to make plans for an intimate ceremony of immediate family and bridal party for their original May date, confident they could honor whatever safety and mobility measures were in place. We are so glad these two found an outcome that felt right for the spirit of their celebration and their health and we are SO excited to rock their 2021 wedding anniversary with most of the plans already in place!

SCENARIO 3.

Your intimate wedding is in July, approximately four months away from the peak of travel restrictions in the area of your celebration (to date). The vast majority of your 30 guests are family members traveling from out of town and across the country, which means that many of them are very young or very old and fall in the “at-risk” population for COVID-19. While your intimate wedding is tucked away in the forest and away from major population centers, your guests will have to travel through airports, on airplanes, and in rental cars to get to your celebration. You understand that the date is far away, but this seems like a lot to ask from at-risk loved ones when the spread of the disease is still on the rise. You need to let your family and friends know your plans soon so that they can make travel arrangements. What do you do?

To this couple, the answer was clear: let’s have a two-person elopement. Their son was born premature and his ongoing health challenges put him in the “at risk” population for COVID-19. If he came along, he would need care for the duration of the trip from a friend or family member so that the couple could have their ceremony, which meant asking others to risk their health and well-being to travel across the country at a potentially contentious time. Was it too early to know for sure? Yes. Did the couple want to live, and cause their guests to live, in decision-making limbo? Absolutely not.

The beauty of this decision? The couple had originally planned on a two-person elopement when they got in contact with their photographer and planner. Over time, the scope of the celebration grew as their friends and family members began to weigh in to their decisions. While the celebration they built was going to be a blast, it was not what they had originally intended. Getting back to a two-person elopement was in alignment with their original intention for the day: having quality time on a epic adventure together as partners—just the two of them. We at Tapestry did the work of reaching out to vendors to re-calibrate their orders and contracts to the change. Their vendor team was excited to hear that they would still be traveling out to have a special moment together, that they could be of service to the couple, and that their elopement was priority enough to move forward with their vision, just the two of them.

SCENARIO 4.

You are hosting a very thoughtful, intentionally-planned wedding in July on a remote property. Both you and your partner had an intimate ceremony the year prior and this is your big celebration with a circle of 100 cherished humans. You are two weeks into quarantine and four months from your date, but taking into account the considerable time and travel of your guests, you want to get information to them with two or more months of notice prior to your wedding date. A new wave of information about the virus and requisite government decisions is due mid- to late-April; until then you will have no clear or actionable information. For now, shelter is in place. How do you organize your decision making process?

The uncertainty of summertime celebrations has many couples in a state of freeze. We don’t know enough about the near-future to make a change of plans, yet we hesitate to fully commit knowing that the landscape is uncertain. We connected with this couple to chat over the experience they were having, their hesitations, and the concerns expressed by their friends and family members. We set a date of April 25th to re-circle the wagons and make a final decision; this acted as an anchor in their timeline they knew their family members could rely on. We also encouraged them to make use of our email template to proactively communicate with guests about monitoring the situation and a final decision timeline (and to help stem the tide of one-off inquiries that can cause a lot of stress). In the meantime, we gave them homework to move out of the current state of freeze and into a state of action. We invited them to imagine their life under a few different scenarios come their April decision-making date:

1. Shelter is still in place in an effort to limit the spread of the disease.

2. Shelter has been lifted and gatherings are limited to <50 people with safe social distancing.

3. Shelter has been lifted and gatherings of any size are no longer banned with safe social distancing.

What we asked this couple to do is “real play”. We asked them to imagine what their ideal celebration would look like under each scenario. We asked them to consider the input and concerns of their guests thus far and how that would impact the celebration. We asked them to look at creative adaptations, like a change of venue or a change of celebration format, to see which combination of factors best targeted their ideal celebration in these new times. And we asked them to revisit their values for the day as a reminder of what is most important to them as individuals and a couple.

We asked this couple to real play these scenarios because, when that decision date came around, we wanted them to know that their decision was well-thought-out and we wanted them to feel a familiar with how each scenario would look. While some of the scenarios may have been uncomfortable to imagine, real playing them ensures that they have acknowledged that discomfort and decided how they want to act if that scenario becomes real. And doing it as a partnership ensured that they were making the best decision for their celebration, their marriage, and their family. While this scenario doesn’t have an outcome (yet), we think that this example has more to offer in the process of preparing to make a decision, rather than in the decision itself.

We want to reiterate that everyone is having a different experience of their celebration, this virus, and the decisions they must make. Solutions are not one-size-fits-all, but we hope that there are sparks of inspiration in each of these stories that help you move through this time. At the very least, we hope you feel less alone in this community. If you want more thoughtful reading on how to identify and acknowledge grief during COVID-19, we recommend this Harvard Business Review interview with David Kessler.

— Kate, Tapestry Creative Director