Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, I’ve received at least one email a week from someone I’ve never met wanting my advice about their wedding.

These people are not my clients. They’re just people looking for answers about how to safely plan, attend, or work a wedding during COVID. They find me because I’ve spent the past two years writing about these very topics including a book about modern wedding etiquette.

What follows is one of those emails. I’ve anonymized the person and, where needed, updated or removed certain details. The person has also OK’d that I share our conversation.

I’m calling this series “Dear Wedding Planner.” Join my newsletter to learn when I publish the next question. See previous installments here.

Dear Wedding Planner:

My fiancé and I set a vaccine boundary (per your advice) where all guests 12 years of age and older would need to be fully vaccinated to attend our wedding. We did this because I’m high-risk, and I have several close family members and wedding attendants who are also either high-risk or immunocompromised. We also did this after checking in with our wedding attendants and close friends/family to gauge whether or not any of them couldn’t get the vaccine.

Then, my best friend of 16 years (who’s in my wedding party) called to tell me that she wouldn’t be getting the vaccine. This comes after months of her assuring me that she would absolutely get the vaccine to limit the risk to me and my loved ones.

I feel completely stuck about what to do or how to communicate with her on this because she won’t engage in a conversation with me about why, and I’m left to think that this is more a scenario of her deciding she won’t get a vaccine vs. can’t get one.

She wants me to make an exception for her and tell her what she can do to make sure everyone is safe at the wedding and still attend, even though getting vaccinated is out of the question for her. The problem here is that most people in my wedding party and others who know her are also going to the wedding and were already distrustful of her taking precautions because of her cavalier actions broadcasted on social media. Now everyone doubly doesn’t trust her to take proper quarantine/testing precautions because she lied about getting the vaccine for months.

My question is how do I properly handle this in a way that prioritizes everyone’s safety while also not ruining my friendship and uninviting the one person (outside of my family) who I had wanted at my side on the wedding day?

Sincerely,
One Stuck Bride

Dear One Stuck Bride:

Thank you for writing to me and for asking my opinion. I see three possibilities:

Wait. My thinking here is that the science around COVID and the vaccine is solid and we also continue to learn more about both. Not being a scientist, my understanding is that in the scenario described, your friend is actually the one most at risk because she would be attending a large gathering without the protection of a vaccine.

That said, I imagine the fear is that she is a risk to you and the guests you mentioned who are high-risk because no vaccine is 100 percent effective. What are the odds that your unvaccinated friend attends your wedding and gives you COVID even though you are vaccinated? How bad would your COVID be if you got it knowing that so far the science seems to indicate that vaccinated people are much less likely to get really sick or die of COVID if they do catch it?

I don’t know the answers to these questions. I only voice them to lay out all of our options. This first one — wait — is a gamble to see if more science comes out about transmission and risk for vaccinated people.

How long do you wait? My recommended deadline is to make all COVID-related decisions around a wedding is no later than 60 days before the wedding. That may not be enough time so talk to your fiancé and see if 45 days? 30 days? before makes more sense for this situation.

Realize that the longer you two wait to make a call, the higher the chance that other guests may feel caught unawares by the choice that you make and the more likely you are coming up on payment deadlines with your vendor team.
Allow the friend to come but require her to wear a mask at the wedding (and potentially test and quarantine before the wedding). This is the “have your cake and eat it too” option (wedding pun intended). Like option no. 1, it is not a great option because, based on what you’ve told me about your friend, she sounds like a person who doesn’t think the rules apply to her.

That means that if she does come to your wedding and you ask her to, say, wear a mask because she’s unvaccinated and a risk to herself and potentially, you and your guests, she probably won’t do it — particularly if she’s the only one who has to wear a mask because she’s the only one who isn’t vaccinated. I could then see a scenario where you are ripped out of the joy of your wedding day because you’re having to play babysitter for your adult friend.

This situation only gets worse if she drinks.

One thing that could help you here: What's legally allowed in your area for weddings and live events? What’s legally allowed at your venue? Figure out what’s legal, if you don’t already know. (Here’s a resource to help.) The law may be on your side to force your friend to play by the rules.
Politely uninvite the friend and potentially, celebrate the start of your marriage with her in a different capacity. Yes, this is the most nuclear option and it has the highest emotional cost. I do not want to discount this.

Also, she lied to you. If she had lied to you about anything that wasn’t a vaccine, would you tolerate that behavior in your friendship?

If you’re reading this and shaking your head because I’m confirming something you've already been thinking, here’s one way you could approach the next conversation with her:

Unfortunately, we* cannot accommodate anyone who isn’t vaccinated. I wish this wasn’t the case because you are the one person outside of my family whom I want to be with me on my wedding day. Since that won’t be possible, [insert way that you two can recognize your marriage in a different capacity — do not feel compelled to include this if you don’t actually want to hang out with her because again, she might be a risk to you and also, she lied. If you do want to hang out, one option I’m hearing from a lot of couples is to plan a separate trip or visit to see this person one-on-one either before or after the wedding].

*You could also potentially blame your wedding venue and/or state laws. My two cents: This isn’t shady as sometimes it’s easier to blame non-human entities than it is to be like “it’s me who’s making this choice that offends you.”

As you navigate this impossible situation, I encourage you to talk to your fiancé about the mission statement of your wedding (this exercise can help clarify what that is, as needed). Does having your friend in-person at your wedding help or hinder you and your fiancé accomplishing that mission? Use that answer as your guiding star.

Thank you again for writing to me and for following my work. I hope what I’ve shared has been helpful and please remember that you are not being selfish. You are not being irrational. You are not being rude.

You are trying to make the best of a bad situation and, from where I’m sitting, your friend is doing everything she can to prioritize herself over you. In my opinion, that’s inexcusable behavior from a fellow adult. I would say that about ANY situation. I will particularly say it about a wedding during a pandemic.

Best,
Beth

Want to submit your own “Dear Wedding Planner” question? Email me at elisabeth@elisabethkramer.com. For the next installment, please subscribe to my newsletter. Thanks for reading.

Elisabeth “Beth” Kramer (she/her) is a wedding planner in Portland, Oregon, who’s fighting the Wedding Industrial Complex. She regularly consults on and coordinates weddings. A former magazine editor, Beth is the author of Modern Etiquette Wedding Planner, the host of the podcast The Teardown, and co-founder of Altared, an international event for wedding vendors who want to change the wedding industry. Learn more about her work by getting her newsletter and following her on Instagram and Twitter.

Elisabeth “Beth” Kramer (she/her). Photo: Marissa Solini Photography