December 2021 Wedding Planning Open Thread

Just keep going...

Hi again friends,

We’re still here, y’all. It’s the middle of December 2022… somehow. No one knows how that’s possible. I truly feel like I wrote last year’s December wedding planning open thread last week. I’ll quote myself and say again… “can we just jump up and down for a second and appreciate that we have indeed made it through all 68 months of 2020 2021.” Because, well, we did. When I wrote that post last year, we were on the precipice of vaccines, we could feel it. COVID was rampant, we knew the holidays were going to be weird, but we knew the vaccines were coming. And they did.

One year later… well… COVID is still sort of rampant. There is a new variant that we are all watching like hawks. Most of us are due (or will be darn soon) for a booster shot. And life, at least for me, feels like a new type of fever dream that is a ridiculous combination of forced ‘normalcy’, utter burnout, and a sense of busyness that I just did not miss in those early days of pandemic life. Is it weird to say that I miss the season when I was baking bread each week and doing front porch drop-offs to my friends and family?

I feel endlessly lucky that my wife (still so fun to say) and I squeezed our wedding in last summer during a little bubble of time between the first tidal wave of vaccines, and the Delta variant. In fact, going back to last year’s post I wrote at this time was really eye-opening…

I found myself in tears no less than five times last month when I would talk to someone and hear “call us back when the guidelines change or there’s a vaccine.” Me to me: ‘Ummm… what? I can’t be the only person you’ve told that to. Can’t I put a soft hold on a date? No… okay.’ And, with some of the highest daily death and infection rates, to date… I know I’m not the only one who finds herself just sitting in sadness and funk about it all. It’s hard to plan a wedding, an exciting joyous day, while the world continues to crumble outside my door.

I’m here to tell you all (and past me) one thing… you will make it to the other side. One way or the other. Our wedding was a tiny group squeezed into a lucky moment when the world felt somewhat safe. Maybe yours will be a courthouse visit, a backyard party, or a fully-vaxxed, fully-tested, full-sized wedding of your dreams. (More on our most recent thoughts about vaxxing and testing for weddings here.) Perhaps you’ve just gotten engaged, or you’ve already postponed a few too many times. For many of these… I’m sorry, and I see you. But you will come out the other side, and you will be married to the person you love the most. Stay the course, be patient with you and each other, and hold onto hope and faith. You’ve got this.

As for this pandemic… it’s gotta end someday right? RIGHT?

In the meantime… how are you holding up? Like… how are you really doing? This is your space to vent, yell, laugh, cry, share… tell us your wins, the things that feel hard, ask questions, ask for advice… this is your open thread. Get to it. See you in 2022 (woah!).

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