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:

I am very new to the wedding industry. I just started in April 2021 as an event coordinator with a catering company that a friend works for because they needed help and I needed a job. Your emails have been instrumental in helping me navigate this craziness.

Like you, I’m based in Portland, Oregon, and I continue to have issues, especially around masking. Our company is very pro-mask but we don’t feel it’s our job to be the “mask police.” I do my due diligence by touching base with clients, planners, and venues — everyone says it’s their policy that everyone wear masks.

Then, the day of the event comes and not even all the vendors wear masks. It’s frustrating.

In my limited experience, caterers are the ones who spend the most time with guests, who often come from all over the world [to attend the wedding]. Now that the rain has started and we’re shifting to inside [events], I honestly worry for my staff.

How do we keep our staff safe?

Sincerely,
Concerned Caterer

Dear Concerned Caterer:

In fall 2021, I worked four weddings in six weeks. I made a COVID safety policy for every one of those weddings. Each couple shared that policy with their guests and I, as their wedding planner, shared that policy with their vendors.

The policy itself was in accordance with what is currently legal in the state where these weddings were hosted (Oregon). At the time of those weddings and as of this writing, the Oregon state government says you need to wear a mask if you can’t socially distance from another household, regardless of vaccination status and regardless of if you’re indoors or outdoors.

I knew this. The couple knew this. Their guests knew it. Their vendors knew it.

And you know what happened at every single one of those weddings I worked? If the couple didn’t wear masks, their guests didn’t wear masks and if their guests didn’t wear masks, many vendors didn’t wear masks either.

This sounds judgy and, in a way, it is but I don’t want to stall out where so many of these conversations stall out. Rather than point fingers, I want to talk about the questions that were on my mind while doing my job because, based on your email, Concerned Caterer, these questions are on your mind, too.

Questions like:

Am I coward because I didn’t tell people to put their masks back on?
Is it now part of my job as a wedding vendor to go up to the couple (a.k.a. my bosses) and say, “Hey, I know you’re having a really good time at your wedding but technically, you shouldn’t be doing that”?
What authority did I have to make this claim? What ground did I have to stand on? Who had my back?
What if those guests and vendors were fully vaccinated, as nearly all of them were — information I knew because of multiple tough conversations the couple and I had together long before their wedding day?

I ask these questions but I don’t expect you to answer. I’m just sharing what ran through my head alongside the million of other things that run through my head on a wedding day when, like you, I’m on my feet for somewhere between 12 and 14 hours and navigating the various demands of dozens of people at any given time.

All to say: It’s a lot.

You asked specifically how to keep your team safe. I respect this question. The best way I can help is to tell you what I did for myself.

At each of those weddings, I decided to not cue the DJ or go up to guests and ask them to put their masks back on or point out to the couple what we all knew to be true: A lot of behavior was going on that we knew could spread COVID if COVID had come to this wedding.

Instead, I controlled what I could. This meant adhering to the boundaries that my husband and I had established in numerous conversations before and during wedding season 2021. For us, those boundaries were us both getting a COVID vaccine as soon as we were eligible to do so and my wearing a mask throughout my entire work shift. (There are other things here like my trying to keep distance wherever I could and staying outside when I can but I won’t bog us down.)

I also challenged myself to have tough conversations with the couple, their guests, and their vendors before and during the wedding. The COVID safety policy was the main way I helped facilitate this conversation; it was a reference I pointed to when I sent final timelines and when I hosted the rehearsal.

Since then, I’ve also added a vaccine-related question to my intake form. It’s yet one way I’m trying to normalize this conversation as I continue to suss out how I can best keep my husband, my family, my friends, my clients, their guests, their vendors, and myself safe.

And none of it feels like enough.

I imagine that you feel the same way. Please know that you are not alone.

Every single wedding vendor I know is asking themselves some form of your question.

Nearly every couple I talk to wants to know if they’re doing the right thing.

I’m getting almost daily questions from couples and vendors about “How do I ask my clients if they’re vaccinated?,” “Can I hire someone to be a COVID safety officer at my wedding?,” and “We’re setting a vaccine boundary so are you vaccinated?”

Where does that leave you and your team? The same place where we’ve been for two years/forever: You have to set your own boundaries.

There’s a very good chance that because of your job, setting your boundaries will cost you money at a time when wedding vendors have suffered historic revenue loss. Setting your boundaries will definitely cost you brainpower. Unfortunately, even after you pay those very high prices of money and brainpower, there’s no guarantee that your boundaries won’t be violated repeatedly.

I recognize how completely inadequate this answer is. It is also the best one I have until something changes.

The good news is that I think that things will change and not for the worst.

I’m hopeful that couples will continue to set COVID safety policies and share those policies with the people they love and the people they hire because having some idea of what to expect is a thousand times better than having no idea what to expect.

I’m hopeful that vendors will help normalize the conversation about vaccination and share their vaccine status on their business websites. This includes if that status is “I have access to the vaccine and am not getting it.” If you don’t know where to start, check out the language I use on my intake form or the vaccinated vendor badge in the footer of this website (courtesy of Bramble & Blossom and available for free here).

I’m hopeful that soon wedding venues I work at will take a cue from stadiums like Providence Park and Moda Center as well as dozens of local bars and restaurants and start asking for vaccine cards or proof of negative COVID tests at the door. I recognize this isn’t easy. I think it’s better than what we have now.

Until all of these things or some of these things or other things I haven’t thought of happen, however, we can only control what we can control.

Take what you can from that and thank you for doing what you can to keep your team and your clients safe. That speaks to your character and I wish you all of the best as we continue to navigate this (still) challenging time.

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.