Planning My Dream Wedding During COVID

When Josh proposed to me back in November 2019 I had no idea that Coronavirus was around the corner. I’m sure 80% of us had no idea either. All I knew was that we were engaged on 11/25/19 his mom’s birthday and I wanted to get married on 11/28/20 which was my mom’s birthday. It was also a Saturday so it was a perfect day in my mind!! Little did I know that getting married in 2020 would present some challenges. Although we were married in the midst of a pandemic I would not change anything about our special day. Wait that is not the 100% truth. I would have loved for more family members and friends to be able to attend, but due to COVID that wasn’t an option. Which I do understand why some people were uncomfortable to attend. I would be lying that the thought of someone catching COVID at my wedding didn’t stress me out. In general when I became a fiance (ayeeee) I realized that planning a wedding was not easy. Everybody and they mama would have an opinion on what you were or were not going to do. I got questions such as “Why you want to get married on your mom’s birthday”, “So those are your bridesmaids?’, “Why are you not doing a sand ceremony?”, or “You really getting your wedding cake from Publix?!”. Then throw COVID-19 in the mix and things would get even crazier. To be a bride, I’ve learned that you need to be a legit “Bridezilla” at times, but that just isn’t my style. Which can be good and bad. On the one hand a go with the flow chill type of person is cool, but on the other hand being to chill can get you ran over! So its not hard to say I learned ALOT during this wedding process. Below I’m going to share what I learned below.

1. Do What You Want . Be a Woman With a Plan. – Linda listen. Don’t Let ANYONE change your mind about what you want within in reason and budget. If you don’t want bridesmaids don’t have them. If you want that small wedding have it. If you want to Elope do it. If you want to get your cake from a grocery store (like we did) girl get the cake from the grocery store!

2.Utilize Your Resources – Look weddings can be expensive. What I learned quickly is you get what you ask for and if you don’t ask you may not get anything AT ALL. My aunt, uncle and cousins were my photographers. What I did know is that I wanted some dope pictures and I wanted to be comfortable while taking them. I was super blessed that my favorite Aunt had been taking pictures all of my life. Hairstylist?? I’m a hairstylist hopper ok! So I already knew that I couldn’t call on my go to hairstylist because I didn’t have one. Two of my bridesmaids recommended their stylists who worked out perfectly. I’m still actually seeing the stylist who did my hair. Our cake came from Publix. Look I didn’t see any point in spending a crazy amount for a Fondant cake that people would scrape the icing off of! Fondant cost money and most people don’t like it! The Publix bakery next door to our wedding venue made us a bomb cake and the cake tasting was FREE!! Oh and how can I forget our rings! We worked with a friend who’s aunt owns a jewelry shop in LA and they designed our rings! Shout out to Richie and his fam! We bypassed all of the extra fees at a traditional jewelry store and were able to get what we wanted!

3. Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff – Look if something doesn’t go as planned LET IT GO. For example since it was COVID we had alot of people who got dressed to watch our wedding on Zoom. Since my cousin had wasted champagne on my phone I was scared that it was not going to work before the wedding. Which caused a chain reaction. I then couldn’t charge my phone to show the person over the Zoom what they needed to do. This led to no one seeing or being able to hear the wedding on the Zoom call. All they could hear were other people cursing about how they couldn’t see anything. When I first heard this I was upset because I knew ALL of our family had missed the ceremony. Within 5 minutes I was over it and we have a wedding video that we are able to share with those who missed out!

4.The Wedding Does Not Make the Marriage – At the end of the day the most important thing to me was marrying my best friend. I honestly could have cared less about who was mad at who or about what, linens, cake and all that jazz. I just wanted to be married and become the wife to my best friend. While I am super blessed to have the wedding of my dreams, I am EVEN more blessed that I married the man who loves me for me and supports my daughter and I.