Good Day beautiful people! I hope you all are doing well and staying safe!
First off, let me just say that my wedding planning process and marriage is a TESTIMONYY! Listen if you see me and my husband all over your TL glorifying God, it’s because the God that we serve is FAITHFUL and we are just grateful!
One of the most challenging parts of my wedding planning process was pivoting my planning because of COVID! So quick run-down, my handsome hubby and I started actively planning our wedding following our knocking (Don’t know what a knocking is…click here) in August of 2019. We quickly realized that our goal of keeping our guest count around 500 people wasn’t gonna happen once we took into account our large families, friends that are like family, “cousins”, “uncles”, spiritual fathers/mothers, church family etc. so we began planning for 650-700 guests joining us for our wedding celebration. As many of you know, professionally, I have worked for a hotel that hosts large conventions, so I was literally planning my wedding like a convention with a check-in process, volunteers, like the whole 9 lol.
Then February came and we started realizing that Auntie Coro was continuing to spread, but our wedding was in June so we were hopeful that things would have calmed down by then so we continued to plan. All of a sudden, it’s the third week of March and different cities across the US started to institute shelter-in-place policies. For the first time ever I experienced extreme anxiety because this mysterious disease popped up out of nowhere and brought everything to a screeching halt. I also started to get hints that I was either going to be laid off or furloughed from work which made my anxiety worse. I remember calling my handsome hubby one day when I was really anxious and him praying with me. He then reminded me that I could not let fear cripple me, but that I should lean on God now more than ever. That day as I had my private devotional time, the song My Help came on followed by Psalm 91 . I played these songs on REPEAT then began to study a Psalm a day which encouraged and comforted me in this time of uncertainty. Whenever I started to feel fear or anxiety creeping in, I went back to read Psalm 91 & 121 (depending on the day) or listened to the two songs above. Next thing I knew, I was furloughed from work, but I knew God had a plan for me so I took a deep breath and decided to go to my parent’s house in LA to pray, rest and eat free food okurrrtt! Lol.
Hubby and I decided to take a few weeks to pray before making a decision on the wedding. After two weeks, we realized the situation with COVID was not getting any better which was a little disheartening, but we continued to anchor ourselves in the Lord. As the days and weeks continued, we began to get various confirmations that we were not to postpone our wedding NO MATTER WHAT. My initial reaction was okay, so COVID is going to go away in time. As we continue to pray, the second instruction I received was prepare for a downsize. In my head I said, oh okay so like 100 right God? I think God probably laughed out loud at this one. Finally hubby and I declared a three day fast to seek God’s face. Coming out of the fast, we knew and received the confirmation to proceed with our scheduled wedding date with a small group of individuals. We then spoke to our families. Once they were on board, we were ready to hit the ground running with the new plan! At that point, Los Angeles only allowed groups of up 10 people to gather, so that is what we started planning for. BUUUUTTT we said if we were going to having a quarantine wedding, it was going to be the BEST quarantine wedding ever! At this point, we were five weeks away from the wedding too, so we had a lot to do in a short period of time. To be honest, I followed the steps in Love is NOT Canceled III: An Intimate Celebration to the T, but let me give you a couple of notes on my process.
First things first, how were we going to do this and where? Initially, we thought of renting a mansion and having our traditional marriage and white wedding on one day. I kept coming across amazing mansions, but the ones that I truly loved were not ready to start having events yet. SO we said, why rent a place when my parents have a good size house? We can transform the space! With the help of my awesome decorators at Twin Perfections, we created two different experiences for the two celebrations.
Next, we needed to inform our extended family and close friends of the new plan to have a hybrid celebration. This was quite the process in itself! There were certain people we needed to call then we were able to send a mass email out to all of the individuals we had already invited to the wedding using our Joy Wedding Website (pw: 061320). Oh and you know everyone had their own opinion on our decision, so an eventful process to say the least. 🙂
Next on the list…vendors! So if we were going to have the best quarantine wedding ever, we would need a dope vendor crew on board which we had already pretty much already had. But once again mysterious auntie coro was buzzing around, so we reached out to each vendor to gauge their comfort level with still being a part of the celebration on a smaller scale. Many of our vendors would need to fly into LA and we didn’t want anyone to be pushed into an uncomfortable situation, so it was completely their choice if they wanted to still be apart of our big day. Did all of our vendors agree? No! And that was totally okay with us! We made some swaps, requested refunds where necessary, and continued down the planning path.
Challenge number IDK…our attire. Y’all, at this point…all of our clothing that was in the works, had been paused. My white gown was at the dress store which was closed. We also had many items being made in Ghana, so we needed to figure out if and how we could get them to the US on time. After spending a pretty penny on DHL and domestic shipping, everything made it on time to the glory of God!
Somewhere between confirming all of our clothes and working on the wedding timeline, we decided that we were not going to have both celebrations on one day, but rather Friday for the traditional, then Saturday for the white wedding as originally planned. We did this for a few reasons one being some technicalities to having a smooth live stream and timeline without feeling rushed or running late.
Finally, with one week to the wedding, LA County opened up a bit which allowed us to open up our guest list just a bit as well. We were able to officially invite 40 people to join in the weekend’s celebration. Did we probably have more than 40 people during certain parts of the ceremonies? Yes! But it’s all good!
And now…to the glory of the Most High, I’m married to an amazing man!
If you’re a 2020 bride or groom, with upcoming nuptials, a huge congrats to you in advance. Once again, love is not canceled!! I’m more than happy to be a resource if you have any questions as you’re planning and preparing. Send me an email or DM!
If you’re curious to see how it all came together, check out our wedding highlight video at this link. After you watch, don’t forget to hit that subscribe button. Who knows maybe the blogs will evolve to become…? Idk…as the spirit leads.
That’s it for now friends, but more to come! Stay tuned.
Toodles for now, SugarBees!!
