Like many of you, Lauren and Rich never dreamt when they first met nine years ago that their 2020 wedding would unfold like it did. Originally, they’d planned a big wedding for 4th July, but instead of postponing, they decided to keep the date as it was important to them and scaled it right back.
In fact they only had 10 days to finalise plans after Boris Johnson’s announcement on 23rd June regarding weddings being allowed again on July 4th – and to add to the pressure, a national newspaper were due to be present to cover the celebration!
GET READY because you are about to fall in love with Alena, Alex and their incredible pop up wedding! This is kind of like a feature in two parts, because they had a Covid-secure ‘pop up’ ceremony and then a photo shoot with Mary Costa to commemorate…. And those photos are literally making all our colourful unicorn wedding dreams come TRUE.
For this pair, who are both toy designers and met at design school, a ceremony at Bob Baker Marionette Theatre in Los Angeles was the perfect idea. They took part of the Short & Sweet Pop Up event that they were hosting. Alena told us all about it, “As toy designers, fun is always an inspiration for us. With this in mind, we decided on the Bob Baker Marionette Theatre as our venue and had our ceremony officiated by a star puppet which was then broadcast over Zoom for our friends and family who couldn’t be there. We also planned it in only one month! “
Alva met Shay while she was living in Amsterdam and he had travelled over from Israel for the Amsterdam Tattoo convention. Although they lived in different countries, they kept in touch afterwards and became great friends. A few months later Alva moved to Isreal to be with him and start their lives together. Four years later they had their first child, Neo, and six years after they met they were married.
Being an unconventional couple, having a wedding with any form of tradition was never on the cards. Their outfits were Victorian meets gothic inspired, as this is how they dress on the daily.
Alva’s dress came from a gothic shop in Amsterdam (she bought it four years before and kept it because she knew it would be her dream wedding dress as soon as she saw it!) and she wore it with shoes from Dolls Kill. Shay’s jacket was from the same store and his boots were New Rock.
With new restrictions, local lockdowns and the ever-looming presence of Covid-19, weddings seem to be balancing on a knife edge. Here at Rock n Roll Bride (I mean, its a wedding industry wide feeling TBH!) we feel such anguish for those couples who planned a 2020 wedding and have now had to push back. Today, writer LJ Stocks shares six ways you can still make your postponed wedding date special.
If you’ve been planning your wedding for a long time and have dreamt joyful singing, jam-packed dance floors and tight hugs from your closest friends and family, having to postpone your day is, to be blunt, a huge disappointing pain in the arse. Maybe you’ve opted to have a smaller Covid secure ceremony with a big party planned for next year (fingers crossed!) or maybe you’ve pushed back entirely. Whichever camp you’re in you’ll have had to make tough decisions and it sucks balls.
For those of you who can see the date of your postponed wedding approaching, I think it’s really important to still mark the day, rather than see it pass by without a mention. As well as recognising the hard work and planning that you’ve put in, it’s an excuse to take a break from this hellish year and do something fun with the one you love.
Because if we don’t take every opportunity for fun at the moment, life is just going to start dragging us down! So, chin up girl, let’s take a truly weird situation and make it fabulous.
Here are six ideas for rocking your ‘supposed-to-be-wedding’ day.
Take a day off
Meet up with your bridal party (as long as the numbers adhere to whatever the social distancing guidelines are in your town/ country at the time…) Socially distanced fun with your bridesmaids and best men will mark your day in style. Picnic in the park? Day out at a theme park? Dinner at your favourite eatery? Grab your face mask and just get super silly for the day.
Get snappy
Photo shoots are back on! See if your wedding photographer is still available and frolic in fields, build sandcastles on a beach or get moody around a sunset fire pit to capture memories on the day that should have been your wedding. I love the idea of making a real occasion out of the day. Rather than pretending it doesn’t exist, mark the day with some epic shots to look back on in years to come. It’s all part of your wedding and marriage journey.
This morning I posted in our private Facebook group checking in with everyone and asking if there was anything particularly worrying people right now. Overwhelmingly, the responses were that there was a general feeling of anxiety and apathy about having to postpone and re-plan their weddings. I figured if that’s going on in there, it’s probably going on out here too, so I did something I haven’t for a very long time and sat down to write and publish a blog post in real time!
Here’s my advice if you’re feeling very anxious and stressed out, or if all the excitement of planning your wedding has all but disappeared right now:
IF YOU ARE FEELING ANXIOUS
I read once that depression is thoughts about the past and anxiety is thoughts about the future – neither of which you can control. The only thing we CAN control is what happens here and now, in this moment. Anxiety robs you of feeling good right now and the things you’re worrying about may not even happen! I know it’s not as simple as waving a magic wand and those feelings go away, but realising this a while back really helped me reframe how I let my anxiety control me.
I’m sure you are doing everything you can to make sure that your wedding goes ahead on your new date, so trust in yourself and your suppliers. Write lots of lists (to get those stresses out of your head – this is especially important if you’re struggling to sleep because you keep going over things in your head) and if something out of your control DOES happen (like having to postpone your wedding again), well, its literally out of your control so try your hardest to stop worrying about it. You got this!!
IF YOU ARE STRUGGLING TO FEEL EXCITED
If you’re feeling bored, apathetic or kind of numb about the whole wedding planning thing – can you plan something else to look forward to right now? If your wedding has been postponed for example, you may have a long time to just sit around and wait for it to happen. What else could you look forward to? A mini break? A new house project? It’s OK to not be a super excited bride all the time. That’s not realistic, even if you DIDN’T have a worldwide pandemic to deal with.
This isn’t your typical styled wedding shoot… which is why we love it! A team of wedding suppliers from Baltimore wanted to get together to create something to reflect how they, and others in the events industry may be feeling during a global pandemic. They also wanted to showcase this ‘new normal’ that we’re all experiencing, but in a really beautiful way.
The idea was the brainchild of Kate Ansari, the owner of Haven Street Ballroom She had the forethought to create a shoot around the new concept of having to wear a mask, and even if you have to on your wedding day, it doesn’t have to be uncomfortable or unstylish. In fact, these photos make us want to rush out and stock up on masks to match every outfit we own TBH!
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