To ask what the hell I'm supposed to do about my wedding?

[Covidwedding]

20 months ago my partner and I booked a destination Caribbean wedding. I know the general MN opinion on destination weddings, so please hold back from telling me I've been selfish as it really is too late and all families were consulted before booking.

Obviously we didn't predict a pandemic. It's been a shit storm of a year, my hours and wages have reduced dramatically, we nearly cancelled the wedding as we were worried we couldn't afford it but it meant all our family and friends that had booked would lose their money, and no way could we afford to reimburse. A loan was agreed with my parents to avoid this.

We had a few older family members drop out a few months ago, due to health concerns with covid which we fully understood. Arranged a zoom for the ceremony and apologised for the sheer shittiness of it all.

Full balances are due in six weeks for those have been paying in instalments, and we've had a few people come forward and say they don't have it, their financial situations have changed and it's impossible. The issue is these are important people, siblings, wedding party etc. It's a complete mess. We are still in the same situation where if we cancel all money is lost, and although we've lost about 12 guests who know they'll lose money, they've chosen to not attend and are ok with the implications. There are still 30 who are still in and paid up.

My partner and I are on very different pages with how to handle it, though one of us has lost more guests from their family than the other so we may be seeing things through biased eyes.

One of us wants have a legal registry office ceremony here first with all the family who can't attend, but to keep the destination wedding as a 'blessing' despite knowing it won't be the wedding we had in mind but also knowing that we have no means to reimburse the 30 remaining guests and don't want to cause family rifts by pulling the plug.

The other feels too many important people have pulled out and it's not right to go ahead, they'll never get over getting married without these people there and that the other guests can decide whether to lose the money or to transfer the balance to another holiday of their choosing. They also aren't happy with a registry office do for those who can't come as feels it's a 'fake' wedding and the 'real' wedding will always be the destination one.

Please can I have opinions, not abuse, I'm so torn over it all. With hindsight we wouldn't of booked this wedding, but it's far too late for that.

"I am trying literally everything in order to not cost people money"

lol, funny that with a destination wedding.

Hhahaha so true 😂😂

Op postpone your wedding. Two years even. Then you might be able to become pregnant and have a baby. And have the baby be part of your wedding 🙃
Destination weddings are a bad thing to begin with. It puts people in impossible situations financially. Especially going to far away and not just France or something 😅

Weddings aren't about foreign destinations, but about love and commitment that you wanna share with friends and fam. Not getting people to spend 2/3k on a wedding that could have just been in your backyard really😊.

Anyho...good luck

HRTWT.
Send out a survey monkey survey to all your guests with the options, go with the one that is most popular. Be honest in your intro explaining the situation. At least you’ll get honest responses and can strip trying to second guess what people want to do/don’t want to do.

Meant to say "I don't think travel will be normal next year", not won't!

Before this becomes a bunfight over whether destination weddings are ok or not, we made our choice with our families. We all live so spaced out across the UK and rarely get much time together. We'd been talking for years of doing a big, once in a lifetime family holiday. We floated the idea of making it into our wedding and everyone was happy and excited. It's been the talk of the last nearly two years. Everyone is so excited for the weeks of family time not just the one day. It's more than just a wedding to be honest. I'm not some selfish bitch who said well I want to get married here, so cough up.

My concern would be that the cost of deferral might go up. I don't think the price is higher because so many people are booking for 2022, I think it's, again, because they don't want you to rebook, they want your money now - like how Ryanair will currently let people rebook for any time before March 2021 but, mysteriously, the flights in March are all incredibly expensive. The closer we get without it being clear that things are getting better then I suspect the price of your new booking will get more expensive than it is now.

OP I think it would help if you figured out what you can reasonably afford to do.

It sounds like:
You can't reasonably afford to postpone it
You can't reasonably afford to repay the deposits of those still going if you cancel
You could reasonably afford to pay the admin fee for those still going to switch attending your wedding to a holiday (presumably with the same company, which the may not want to do)

Therfore you either need to go ahead or convince 30 people to switch their wedding spend to a (possibly more expensive holiday).

Is that correct?

Given you only have ten hours work at the moment TTC wouldn’t seem the wiser option anyway.

I certainly wouldn’t marry here first and then still expect guests to pay for a fake wedding. Especially when that’s not they signed upto.

You started it - you'll have to finish it. Whether you have a register office wedding or not, if 30 people have paid thousands at your request, then you have to see it through whether you like it or not.
I suppose if you're lucky there will be a travel ban and you'll all get your money back.

Go ahead with wedding with those who have paid. Those who choose to pull out can do so but they will have to take the hit financially. Unless you are wealthy don't even get started on the whole refund nightmare. Zoom the wedding to those who couldn't be there. later, after all has calmed down have a family party for those who missed out.

@IceCreamAndCandyfloss

Given you only have ten hours work at the moment TTC wouldn’t seem the wiser option anyway.

I certainly wouldn’t marry here first and then still expect guests to pay for a fake wedding. Especially when that’s not they signed upto.

That’s true.

If it were me I would plan to defer, but I would offer everyone the choice first if they want to come along or if they’d prefer to be refunded.

However I do take issue with the ‘fake wedding’ thing - it’s not a fake wedding, it’s a celebration of marriage and/or first anniversary party.

I would attend a destination wedding, but I wouldn't pay thousands to go on a holiday of someone else's choosing simply to see a blessing. That is a bit of a piss take and I think if you are going to do something here as well then it needs to be after the wedding.

The attitude of it not mattering that your family will lose their deposits as they can afford to is really awful.

Your partner is overreacting. You chose to marry abroad so people pulling out/not being able to go was always going to be a possibility.

Just because your (I presume) family have more money it doesn't mean that they deserve to be messed around due to the toddler tantrums of a grown up. You can set up zoom to livestream the wedding and have a blessing next year or whenever it's safe.

The chances are that even if you have a registry office wedding here you will be restricted in who can attend due to numbers permitted.

It's all shit. It sucks, but it's the way it is right now. As someone said upthread, if this year has taught us anything its to not delay doing tge things we want to do.

When I said that’s true I meant about automatically assuming that everyone would still want to attend. Not about ttc, since I’m sure OP is quite capable of deciding whether that’s appropriate.

Most destination weddings are symbolic. A lot of the time this may not be made obvious to the guests and the couple will keep it quiet and just go alone to the registry office at home but it's definitely more 'rare' to have the abroad ceremony be the legal ceremony than for it it to be the other way round.

@Covidwedding - are you actually getting legally married while over there in April?

I know you are saying some destination weddings are symbolic but is yours a symbolic one or are you getting legally married there ?

@youvegottenminuteslynn

Your partner is being so incredibly selfish. I would be really disappointed in him.

Is actually the crux of the problem. What's he doing to sort this situation out? Has he spoken to his family to see if they actually have any strong feelings about it going ahead? Or is he whinging and leaving everything to you to sort out.

I'm not against destination weddings - hell I had one, but he must have realised that people can drop,out for all sorts of different reasons.

I work in the travel industry and bookings for next year are booming. I would have your wedding abroad as planned with just the guests that have said yes. You can have a party when you are back for the people that don’t go. Don’t put your life or plans on hold for other people.

Postponing would have its own issues and wouldn’t guarantee that those who have dropped out would change back to going. It would put pressure on them to find money that they have already said they don’t have, and the guests that are still willing to go in April would be messed around and charged extra for the privilege.

Your dp needs to accept that this is a problem that exists because if his family choosing to cancel. They made an understandable choice, but it’s still their choice.

I wouldn’t defer if it’s going to cause huge issues. I’d cancel now and refund the guests.

I’d really recommend having a small registry wedding, but it wouldn’t be fair if only one side of the family could attend, so I’d keep it to the two of you, your child and two witnesses (best to either have strangers or one of your close friends each, not family members). Then you can re-evaluate on how best to celebrate with each side of the family and your wider circle of friends at a later stage.

[quote IceFrost]@Covidwedding - are you actually getting legally married while over there in April?

I know you are saying some destination weddings are symbolic but is yours a symbolic one or are you getting legally married there ?[/quote]
At the moment we are booked for a legal ceremony, but we haven't informed our families of that as such, in fact when I told that to my sister (only person I specifically mentioned it too) she was surprised as had assumed it wouldn't be. If it was to be a symbolic ceremony we wouldn't of mentioned it any different. There are costs involved in making a destination wedding legal in your home country, for the judge, paperwork translations and legal fees we were quoted close to £3k, so a lot of people avoid that by having that as the wedding and then treating the registry office here like the 'paperwork'. I personally wouldn't see it any differently whether legal or symbolic, it doesn't change much, it's still the wedding.

I think a lot of guests would disagree. If I’m invited to a wedding I assume it is one, not fake for the venue and photos. The actual wedding is the legal part, the rest is fake unless sold as a blessing and guests know from the start.

Have you spoken to the travel agents? Is there a way to get all the money paid in back as vouchers? Even if you had to cover an admin fee that would still be cheaper.

I don't know if there's a way to do that but people were being offered vouchers previously

At the moment it's just loss of deposit. If anyone pulls out in the 3 months beforehand then yes we'd be liable for the full balance but I believe everyone should of paid in full by then.

You've left yourself wide open to a massive bill as you have booked for everybody and are therefore legally liable for any bills. I'd say you need to cancel to avoid the risk of paying these bills if/when people decide they can't go.

It’s a big big pickle for sure. Frankly I’m amazed that you managed to get 42 people to commit to a Caribbean holiday wedding two and a half years in advance. But you are where you are and there would always have been some who may have had to pull out nearer the event even without Covid.

Obviously the best solution would be to cancel and reimburse all deposits but as that doesn’t seem to be possible then frankly you just have to make the best of the situation and continue with it for the 30 people still willing to go. Though you may well find that even more pull out when full balances are due.

I agree it really is a mess and a no win situation.

I would postpone for the year... you want to have a baby do it sooner and take the babe for your wedding! I am from belfast but live in canada with my canadian husband. We travel (well pre covid travelled) to the Dominican Republic 2x a year..sometimes 3x.. Our last trip was in January this year, but obv our Oct trip was cancelled due to quarantine on return. Our best friends live in Dominican Republic. He owns a excursion company there and has told us that things on resorts have changed drastically right now. At this point I would not go to any holiday with a large group unless you had a private villa or 2.. They are being very strict with covid prevention as it should be