Things To Do To Still Celebrate Your Wedding Day+Giveaway!

I don’t know how many more times I’m going to have to give a wedding planning update, but 2020 really is the year of surprises isn’t it? When I wrote this last note in March I was super hopeful and optimistic that by October things would have been going back to normal again and we could carry on with our wedding plans. Well we are sitting in July, and we have been in lockdown in South Africa for over 102 days now, so the situation has only gotten worse and sadly not better yet. Steve and I however are both blessed that we can work from home and stay safe, and that is all that we are focusing on for now. We made the decision to postpone our wedding to 2021- no set date yet, we will see how it goes. I would love to do it as early as January, but it might be May, or even the end of 2021! It is so unpredictable to plan right now, but luckily we actually have the whole day already planned out, so all I need is a months’ notice to pull everything together, and we will be good to go.

Anyways, I didn’t just come here to update you on this, I wanted to share a few fun things with you today. Firstly, Bloom Gin SA is running an awesome competition for all COVID-19 brides at the moment! If you had to postpone your wedding day like us, you can enter on their site over here to win complimentary gin and wedding day favours for your wedding day- now isn’t that fun! While this might not be consolation for all of the hard work that you put into planning your wedding, it’s an awesome gesture from Bloom to cheer you up! You can read all of the details over on their site, and make sure you enter. I am also giving away 2 awesome Bloom Gin Hampers worth over R1000 each over on my Instagram, so make sure you check that out too.

Secondly, I thought that I would share with you a few fun things that you can do on your “would-be” wedding day to still celebrate and make it feel special. Having your wedding day cancelled is extremely disappointing, and don’t let anyone convince you otherwise. You’ve dreamt about it, you’ve planned it to perfection, and in my case- you were so close to it! I was very disappointed about it, and as the “would-be” date was approaching and we were still in lockdown, I thought of a few creative and fun things that we could do on the day to still celebrate. As much as people can tell you to ignore the date as now it means nothing, as a fellow bride I know that it’s not possible, as you’ve had that date etched into your mind for months! We decided to still honor the date and do things that would make us feel good and happy on the day, so here are a few fun things you can do to cheer yourself up and still enjoy the meaningful date.

PS Keep in mind that we were under a strict lockdown for ours so our options were limited. Now you can even do a mini-ceremony with a priest and have the moment captured!

1. Put on some “bridal attire”

I’m not saying put on your wedding dress or suit, but if you had something from your bridal shower or bachelorette such as a sash, a “bride-to-be” crown or a T-shirt, then put it on! You are still a bride and a groom, and you are still getting married! We had fun T-shirts that my mom gifted us with last year and I had a veil from my bachelorette party, so both of us dressed up on the day and went around doing our daily tasks in our fun T-shirts.

2. Spoil your partner

I had the loveliest surprise from my fiancé, when a pamper box from Net Florist arrived at the door on our would-be wedding day. Because we were just coming out of lockdown, Steve couldn’t get me flowers to cheer me up so he ordered some bath goodies and candles off Net Florist. Gift something small for your partner to surprise them, because it really does bring extra love to the day! Now that we are on Level 3 you can spoil them with flowers, beauty hampers, or even a little getaway within your province. This is the time to get creative, maybe even do a little home-made card or letter, so you can look back and remember the day.

3. Have a special dinner with what you would have had at your reception.

We were set to have a sit-down dinner for our wedding, and we just had the food tasting in February and settled on our menu and our wines. We were really excited about the meal, because to both of us this was something important on the wedding day. We decided to re-create our menu by having home-made butternut soup (our starter), beef fillet with sides (our main) and wedding cake on the night, paired with some delicious wine! Our menu will be changing now because we are no longer getting married in winter, so it was a special way to honor the day.

4. Have a Zoom online party with your bridal party!

One of the best parts of the day was our Zoom chat with our bridal party. We spoke to our parents earlier in the day, but in the evening we decided to have some fun and be less formal, by just having our bridal party on the call. We have a large bridal party, with us both having 6 groomsmen and bridesmaids(plus their partners!) so we were up until 1pm the next morning, saying toasts and speeches, doing shots and just laughing and having a good time. It got me feeling excited about when our day does come, because I know it will be amazing and full with love, if our small celebration was anything to go by.

COVID-19 brides, I know that things seem really hard and uncertain for you at the moment, and I am with you on this journey! Just keep in mind that your big day is still coming and we will all make beautiful brides once this is all done (because this too, shall pass!).