Rescheduling Your Wedding

The COVID crisis has led to the canceling of everything from family trips and concerts to graduations and weddings. As a supplier of portable toilets for weddings, we’ve seen many of our clients forced to postpone their weddings over the last few months. This is one of the many things that’s been hard to witness during the pandemic because we know how much brides and grooms-to-be look forward to their big day and how special these occasions are for their family and friends. We love being a part of these kinds of happy occasions, which is why it’s great to see that wedding porta potty rentals for the summer, fall, and even winter are picking back up. A wedding can be canceled for any reason though – venue catastrophes, natural disasters, sickness, a death in the family, financial issues, or even conflict. Once a wedding is canceled, then beings the arduous task of trying to get it re-planned. If you need to reschedule your wedding, it can seem like a totally overwhelming process. Where do you even begin when rescheduling your wedding? If the unthinkable happens, follow these steps to cover all your bases and get your big day back on the calendar:

Rebook the Venue

Talk to your contact at your venue to look for available dates for rescheduling your wedding. A wedding coordinator can take your preferences of day of the week, season, and time of day into account to find some possible dates that will fit your needs. Depending on the size of the venue there may also be ways to accommodate your desires if you’re willing to compromise slightly. For instance, large professional wedding venues often have multiple events going on at the same time in different areas. If you’re willing to have your wedding ceremony and reception in a different room or someplace else on the property, you may have more dates to choose from when rescheduling.

Popular wedding venues are in high demand during the busy summer season. That means you may not be able to reschedule your wedding for several years. Obviously, this isn’t ideal. If you can’t find a date to reschedule your wedding, you may have to find a new wedding venue. This is one area where non-traditional outdoor wedding venues really shine. Having your wedding at a park, farm, family property, or vacation rental home will likely give you more flexibility. Consider going outdoors for your big day!

Find New Vendors

Contact your caterer, DJ/band, photographer, videographer, and portable toilet supplier. Find out if they can still service your event once the date has been changed. Acting quickly is important! If your vendors can’t accommodate your new event needs, you’ll need to find new vendors to fill in. Look locally and ask friends and online communities who they recommend for your big day.

Send Updated Invitations

Once you have the date and location figured out, send new invitations to guests. Re-invite both those that RSVPed yes and those that RSVPed no. Some guests that RSVPed no previously may be able to attend the wedding now that the date has changed. If you don’t want to spend money to resend formal invitations, call or email guests instead. Alternatively, you could set up an online event page to convey critical information and manage RSVPs.

Do Re-fittings

Depending on how much time will pass between the original wedding date and the new wedding date, the wedding party may need to be refitted for their formalwear. Give bridesmaids and groomsmen the choice to get refitted if they think that their sizes may have changed. It’s always better to check and not need any alterations or size swapping than it is to arrive at the big day only to find out that clothing doesn’t fit and the wearer doesn’t have time to get it fixed. This is an especially big problem if the bride’s size changes because wedding dress alterations typically take several weeks.

Send Thank You Notes for Early Gifts

When your wedding is rescheduled it’s likely that you’ll receive gifts ahead of time from friends and family who weren’t invited, had indicated that they couldn’t attend, or were late in finding out that the wedding was canceled. Make sure to send thank you notes for gifts as you receive them. Otherwise, it’s easy to forget who sent what and overlook someone when sending thank you cards later. A great way to stay organized is to keep a log of the gifts that you received and who they came from, as well as whether you thanked the sender.

Celebrate Your Original Date

Rescheduling your wedding is a headache. There are phone calls to make, emails to follow up on, contracts to review, deposits make, and so on. It’s stressful for engaged couples to go through the process again after the wedding had already been planned once. Make the time to celebrate your original wedding date by going and doing something just the two of you. Schedule a romantic date night celebration to reconnect and remember why you’re doing this in the first place.

Kerkstra Luxury Portable Restroom Service Inc. provides portable restroom service across Michigan and luxury restroom trailers for all of the states surrounding the Great Lakes. Take a look at our mobile restroom trailers and request a quote today!