Hello all you lovely people! My name is Alexandria and I am a wedding and event planner in California. I have been wanting to start a blog for a while now to talk about my experiences, and I feel like with things slowing down a bit right now, this would be the perfect time. I got in the hospitality industry because I love helping people, and it hurts my heart to see people in pain or suffering. The crisis that we have at hand right now is a difficult one, but just like other events in America’s history, it has brought us closer together (but from a distance!). It has been so nice to see people buy groceries for their neighbors, pool together to sew masks for nurses, get in touch with estranged friends or relatives, bake goodies for others, and do their part of staying indoors to help stop the spread of this virus. Much like what happened after 9-11, I believe we will come out even stronger after this. We all need each other more than we think, and if we all do our part I think the world will end up being a much better place.
As I sit here and write this, I am sitting on my living room floor thinking “What part can I play in this?” “How can I help others during this time?” and “How can I use my assets to provide relief, comfort, or clarity during this time?” These were all tough questions to answer. Then I thought about how my fiance and I have spent a lot of this time indoors working on planning our own wedding. We just got engaged in February, and now we have had so much time to plan our wedding but no ability to book a venue or get a date locked in with many business owners in California staying indoors themselves. This was a huge source of frustration for us, because if we had just been able to book our venue and a date, we feel that the rest of the planning- the real bulk of it- could begin. From there, we could send out save-the-dates, email vendors to see who’s available on that date, email rental companies to see what furniture is available on our date, etc. We couldn’t help but feel completely handicapped in the position that we were left in. We had all of the time in the world to focus on us without any real ability to do anything. After 2 weeks of self-quarantining, we decided to start thinking more proactively about the whole situation. Instead of telling ourselves there was nothing we could do, we started asking “What CAN we do?” “What do we have the ability to do right now?” The answers started out small, like putting together decorations, which seemed a little rash at the time. We began changing our way of thinking and brainstorming even more things that we could do and realized that we were not as handicapped as we initially thought. There were many tasks- big and small- that we actually could tackle. And most of these didn’t even require us to spend any money. As I was sitting in my living room today, it dawned on me: THIS is what I could do to help out my community.
In the last 2 weeks, I have (unfortunately) witnessed many brides who had to cancel or postpone their wedding, which has undoubtedly caused other brides who might be getting married a little bit later to worry (me included). We have worried about how this virus could affect our family members who are able to attend, we have worried about whether or not we should cancel or postpone our own weddings, we have worried about how we are supposed to save up for a wedding now, and on top of that, we have to worry that a lot of our vendors are going to start charging premiums to make up for all of the income that they lost during this time. There is no doubt that this is a scary time to plan a wedding with all of the unknowns. But I know that sometimes worry can be beaten with feelings of “normal” or familiarity. And for life to feel somewhat normal again for us brides-to-be, the familiarity of getting back into the excitement of wedding planning is a key component. I can’t quite tell you how to prepare for these unprecedented times, and I can’t tell you what lies in our future, but what I can tell you is that we need to go back to finding things that make us happy and unite us with others. And I want to strive to help deliver that to all of my brides-to-be out there. So sit back, take a deep breath, tell yourself “You got this! You’ll make it through this” and read some of the tips that I’ll be blogging in the coming days to help you stay on track with your wedding planning and taking advantage of this free and uninterrupted time together. We’re in this together.
Stay tuned for free planning templates, advice on wedding planning from quarantine , and unique indoor date night ideas!
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