Wedding Postponed: How to Keep Momentum in Your Wedding Planning Process
Postponing your wedding is not a nice feeling. It’s disappointing and frustrating. There is a certain amount of momentum that builds up over the months, with encouragement and enthusiasm from friends and family, that is hard to re-capture when you have to dramatically change your date. We at Tapestry FEEL this. We see how hard it is to find purpose in the planning and momentum behind the build-up. Focusing on what is still to come, organizing virtual pump-up events, and giving yourself time to re-acclimate to the new status quo are just a few ideas we are encouraging couples to try to recreate excitement about your big day.
Let’s say this first: Postponing your day is heartbreaking. Yes, you are still getting married. Yes, the day will be pretty much how you imagined it to be, with minor changes. But the experience of building up from the moment of your engagement to the day you finally say “I Do” is vastly different. From my experience postponing my wedding, I felt exhausted by the idea of putting the same amount of energy I had put into this event into a new celebration, either one that had been adapted, or even the same one the following year. The focus and energy I had to put aside for the event now has to extend further than I intended.
That being said, it’s time to figure out what comes next. There’s still a wedding to plan! There are still guests to feed and dances to be danced. We just have to wait a little longer to get there than we thought. Below, we have come up with some tips on how to process and create excitement anew for your celebration and get over that hump of stopped momentum:
START BY GIVING YOURSELF SPACE.
If you’re like me, your first reaction may be to prep and plan, create a timeline for this new schedule and figure out what still needs to be done. After making sure all of your vendor contracts have been adjusted, cancelled, or amended, take some space to breathe. In all likelihood, you have done the majority of the work that needs to be done. If not, there is a lot more time to do all the tasks ahead. Give it a couple of weeks before picking back up the planning notebook. Focus on the moment. Times are weird right now; process the emotions around the postponement before jumping into the next portion of planning.
REVIEW YOUR INSPIRATION.
Review your mood board, Pinterest board, or other forms of inspiration you started with. Look at new ideas to spark enthusiasm. Take some time to look through your visual and emotional details so that you can revisit the core energetic ideas of your celebration. I get a new burst of inspiration every time I look at my pins and think about new ways to be able to accomplish my aesthetic vision with a whole new year to create.
CHAT WITH YOUR PLANNER.
If you have a planner, schedule a meeting to go over what the new timeline will look like. If not, look at your tasks and the calendar and rework your schedule. This will be a great way to see that this postponement is giving you the gift of time, as well as showing you the enthusiasm and focus on your marriage doesn’t have to stop. Decisions that may have been rushed before now have plenty of time to be worked through and made with intention. Any DIY projects can be done within months rather than weeks! Though you probably aren’t thankful to have to wait to get married, this is one upside to this now delayed process. Reveling in it will help more through the coming months with purpose.
FOCUS IN ON THE DETAILS.
One thing I am excited about in having more time before my marriage celebration is the opportunity to deep dive into the decoration details that might have otherwise been rushed, which would have also created stress in those final months. If you’re a couple full of ideas and possibilities (like us), then extra time may give you the breathing room you needed to enjoy creating little details and small touches.
PLAN A VIRTUAL PRE-WEDDING GATHERING.
If part of what is so disappointing about postponing your event is the wait to see beloved family and friends, host a Zoom call with those people. Spend some virtual time together and chat about what you are all looking forward to when the wedding day finally comes. Sometimes gathering the people you love around you (virtually) is the best way to get excited to host them again.
BE INTENTIONAL ABOUT COMMUNITY-BUILDING EVENTS.
Likely, if you had to postpone your wedding, you had to postpone all of the events that occur prior to it, such as a bridal shower or bachelor party. When re-scheduling them, think about how you can spread them out over time, if that is an option, to build excitement over the coming year. Your friends and family are still primed and ready to celebrate you and your future marriage, so don’t worry about them being put out by changing the date. Trust me, their calendars are probably looking pretty empty in the upcoming year.
While the future may still feel a little murky as to what the next year looks like, what type of celebrations will be safe, and how many people will be able to gather, you still can ground down into your celebration values. Focusing on the most important elements of your celebration will help inform any changes that may still come. We hope that some of these ideas will help boost creativity, motivation, and excited anticipation for your big day.
— Kelleen, Tapestry Content Manager