Coronavirus - How to salvage your wedding plans amid a nationwide pandemic

As if wedding planning was not emotional enough, the world decided to throw in the Novel Coronavirus into this year's wedding season. Social media has exploded with brides in a panic, and rightfully so. Thousands of brides are taking to wedding groups on Facebook in an effort to vent over months and even years of wedding planning spent and now wasted. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in the wedding industry are now being tied up with the uncertainty of how long quarantines and minimal crowd interactions will take.

Brides and the wedding industry alike are grieving for the potential lack of celebrated love this season, but there are a few things that brides can do to perhaps keep their wedding within this year.

Reschedule the event: This is obviously far from ideal, but the alternative to canceling the wedding altogether is the greater evil.

Retainer Fees: Many of your wedding vendors require non-refundable retainer fees to hold the wedding date. It would be prudent to contact all of your vendors and ask about these retainers, and whether it would be possible to transfer the original retainer fee to the new date without penalty or having to pay the fee again.

Eloping: There is nothing quite more romantic than saying your vows in front of the Effiel Tower. Or hiking to treacherous, yet beautiful peaks of Yosemite to profess your eternal love.

In light of a situation in which nobody could have foreseen, it is important to remember to breathe (which is definitely easier said than done). You will come to find the wedding community has come together in order to provide their services to brides this season in a way that will salvage an exorbitant amount of investment on one of the most important days of your life. I really am so honored to be a part of a community that holds the sanctity of love in such high regards.