Change of Wedding plans!

As most of you know, Ron and I have been engaged for a couple of years, and had been planning on a large wedding in mid October, not formal at all because we're not formal people, just a ceremony and big celebration for somewhere between 120 - 150 guests. We both have large families and lots of friends.

But Covid-19 changed all that. A lot of our friends are senior, and many would be traveling from out of town, and it made us very uncomfortable to ask them to travel and gather under these current conditions. We wouldn’t, if the roles were reversed.

So instead we're doing an elopement type wedding. Just the two of us on 10/10/2020 in the early morning. Adorable little outside venue about 25 minutes from where we live. She specializes in tiny weddings. I'll still wear my wedding dress (not a traditional dress at ALL....a funky corset style outfit with a fascinator hat, and he'll wear the vest and fedora and cowboy boots he was planning on.) We'll have a photographer because we want to capture ALL the memories to share with everyone. We'll have a cupcake to share with a cute little wedding cake topper, mimosas to toast ourselves with, and a wedding dance! And I may even wear a garter for Ron to remove!!

Also, instead of the 10 day resort honeymoon we were planning on, we’re going to take a month and drive round the country visiting with all those most favorite friends and relatives who will miss the wedding. We couldn’t be happier with this decision!! It's especially meaningful to us to do that because a few of those folks are older, not in the best of health etc., and we'd already talked about the fact that seeing them at the wedding may possibly be the last time we do, y'know?

Here's where we'll have the ceremony.

This is an adorable weathered shed which makes the perfect backdrop for an outside ceremony!


And should the weather be inclement, there's also a covered area to move the ceremony to.


I have some lovely decorations that I'd started to amass for the wedding, much of it doing double duty as decorations for our house, which I'll also bring so as to personalize the venue.

We're really jazzed now that this is settled!

 

I don't know what that is.

 

Ronni, your plans sound wonderful! It'll be a lovely wedding, and how great is that
you'll get to be with all your friends and relatives afterwards. And it'll be more like real visits! At weddings, so much is happening that we never really get to talk with anyone. It's all a blur. This will be wonderful.

I also admire you for being able to change plans given this situation and come up with something that works and that you are excited about.

Be sure to show us photos!

 

I love that idea ! Sounds like more fun than a traditional wedding !

 

Cayuga, I like the idea too of spending quality time with people as we go visiting because you're right, with so many guests at a wedding, we'll only manage to spend a few minutes with each person as we do the rounds, which was something I'd thought of before this new plan, and mused with Ron how me might spend more time with our out of town friends either before or after the wedding.

As far as being able to change plans, it wasn't easy!! We've spent several weeks in bits and pieces trying to figure this out. At one point we talked about just having our immediate families there, but because we all have so many kids and grandkids, that was going to be close to 50 people! And it still meant that several groups had to travel from elsewhere. And there are also people on both sides who we consider to be family even though they're not actually blood relatives. But then if we did that, there would be OTHER people who could easily be offended becuase 'well SOME people you invited aren't actually family, so why aren't *I* invited too?" y'know?

And of course, there was the constant hum of worry about having more than a very few people gather together, in the current virus climate.

The more we talked and tried to narrow down the "who" part of the decision, which of course would then determine there "where" part, the more obvious it became that there was just simply no way that we wouldn't run the risk of hurting some people's feelings. So we decided to hell with it, we'll just offend EVERYONE by having NO ONE attend!!!!

It was actually a HUGE relief to have come to a decision, AND to have that decision make things so completely easy from that point. I mean, I was really looking forward to a big wedding, and was enjoying the planning, but there were a variety of problems I hadn't managed to find solutions for though I had plenty of time. But this tiny wedding with just the two of us? All the problems vanished, everything has flowed so smoothly, no issues, no barriers, no hurdles. 90% of the planning and booking and reserving and shopping is done already!!

I said it before I think, but I'll repeat it...we couldn't be happier!!!

 

Ronni I am so very happy for you and Ron. Truly. We have never actually met but I have a sense of you as a person from your postings. Best wishes for you both.

 

Guys look at this!!

I printed out a map of the US so I could mark all the people we wanted to visit as part of our Honeymoon. We've been in touch with almost everyone we wanted to see, and so far everyone has been excited and willing!!! I'm still not done marking up the Eastern part of the country, but even so, I realized that there's no way we're gonna make it to the Western part in the 3 - 4 weeks we are taking off for our Honeymoon because there are just TOO MANY FRIENDS! What a LOVELY problem to have!