My husband and I were planning a big wedding for fall 2020, but obviously, a global pandemic had other plans in store for us. We talked about delaying the wedding, pushing it out into late 2020… but after a long talk, my fiancé and I decided that we wanted to just be married … we didn't need to have a wedding.
So instead of having a huge wedding that was going to take us a year to plan, we decided to get married a week later, with just parents, siblings, and grandparents. It was basically an elopement, with a couple family members present.
Our plan is to have an anniversary party and vow renewal in a couple of years, when the public health situation has changed. Well, and also, when hopefully we will have enough money to do what we envisioned our wedding being.
So, what about the wedding announcements after this Covid elopement?
We are sending announcements because we don't want people to feel that they were excluded on purpose.
We want them to know that they are important to us and that we truly wanted to share our wedding with them, but that the options for doing that as we wanted just weren't available in the current economy (our theory about why the food is getting crappy).
We're going with this wording:
With great joy we announce that
we were married on
Saturday, October 3rd, 2020
in Austin, TexasOur painfully small guestlist meant there were many loved ones
we were not able to invite.We deeply missed having you there,
but you were in our hearts.We love you.
We miss you.
We hope to see you soon!Love,
His Name, My Name
We used the design I'd picked for invitations for our wedding announcement cards
We ordered the invitations I'd originally fallen in love with to use as announcements because they were one of the few details I was actually set on. Who cares the design is a little too fancy for announcements… they're beautiful, and my people know how much I love stationery!
In the pocket intended for the response card, we instead included the story of how we decided to just get married instead of having a wedding, and all the funny things that happened in those four days of rushing to get a marriage license, rings, and something to wear. I included the story about how old women thought I was crazy when I spontaneously burst into happy tears in the grocery store because I was getting married in a couple days.
What we did NOT include on our marriage announcement
We made a point not to say anything about gifts or a registry. Especially this year, when so many of my friends and family are dealing with financial challenges, we didn't want to contribute any stress there.
The response to these my wedding announcements? Pure joy! We really wanted our extended families and all our friends to feel included in some way, and to be able to understand and share in our happiness… and it worked.
Love it! I’m a stationer, this year has definitely been more interesting. This is the first year someone has had to seen a Round 3 save the date, and the first year I’ve gotten to include swear words in a design, haha. Her idea is a good use of a wedding announcement, and I have no doubt people appreciated some good news.