In January 2021, I put out a call for wedding vendors who would be willing to tell me about their experiences working weddings during COVID.
I did this because if you really want to know what a pandemic wedding is like, you should talk to a wedding vendor. Weddings are, after all, kind of our job.
Based on those interviews I wrote two different stories.
The article you’re currently reading is about what wedding vendors wish their couples knew right now.
This other article is about what it’s like to go to a wedding during COVID.
In both stories, all but one of the vendors asked to be anonymous because they are afraid of ramifications for sharing their experiences.
So, what do wedding vendors wish their couples knew right now? Let’s ask.
The above image is a real story told to me by a wedding vendor. The people involved have been anonymized. Illustration: Joie Thongsavath
Nobody knows what’s legal
“It’s not clear and it’s not clear who's responsible,” one wedding planner said of current health and safety regulations around weddings. “The venues are trying to put the onus on the couple and then, the couple, if they have a planner, expects the planner to know what to do ... And as for the other vendors? It’s a crapshoot.”
I’ve previously written about my own struggles to answer the seemingly easy question “Can I legally have a wedding right now in Oregon?” It took me more than a week to get an answer and even then, the guidance from the Oregon governor’s office and the Oregon Health Authority remains dangerously murky.
While I work primarily in Oregon, I have heard similar frustrations around guidance from wedding vendors all over the country.
Just last month on January 29, New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo announced a new rule allowing 150-person weddings to happen in New York if the couple gets approval from their local county health department including proof of negative COVID tests from everyone who attends their wedding. Here’s just a snippet of the fear and confusion that change has caused.
So no matter where you are in the U.S., unclear guidelines around weddings results in a game of “pass the buck” that leaves couples high and dry when it comes to getting clear answers about what’s legal. As a result, couples turn to their vendors, expecting that they’ll know the latest but often, they don’t.
“It’s been pretty unclear about what is actually okay and what isn’t,” said one vendor. “No wonder couples are confused. I’m confused and I’m a vendor who’s trying to do this for my business.”
Another vendor talked about a client with whom she’s currently working. She asked them how they were following current COVID regulations in the county where they’re hosting their wedding. They said their 75-person indoor wedding followed those regulations (it doesn’t).
“I’m just like ‘fuck!’” the vendor said. “Do I have to be the voice of reason in all of this? It doesn’t feel like my place. I’m there to support the couple … It feels like a weird responsibility.”
A weird responsibility that also has major ramifications for a vendor’s livelihood. Do you risk telling your clients news that may very well result in them firing you? Do you risk this when you can’t even find clear rules to being with?
Still other vendors said their couples don’t care what the rules are. “[The couple] had already decided that, ‘No matter what the COVID rules are by this summer month, we are going to do XYZ,’” said one photographer. “I was like, ‘Nope, you’re stressing me out just saying that. You’re putting my livelihood at risk.’”
While this particular couple’s decision was likely illegal and clearly unsafe, there’s no recourse for a small business owner like the photographer to take. As a result, she felt compelled to make the personally damaging decision to refund a non-refundable deposit — money that isn’t easy to come by after nearly a year of historic revenue loss.
Your vendors are probably on unemployment
“It’s really important to remember that your vendors are people, too,” said one photographer. “People really are trying to keep your best interest in mind. It’s not just vendors trying to get as much money as they can out of you or just protecting themselves.”
Like many of the vendors I spoke with, this photographer chose to waive her usual rescheduling fee for weddings that rescheduled from 2020 to 2021 due to COVID.
This choice is notable because, before the pandemic, rescheduling fees were a way to protect a wedding vendor’s inventory (i.e. Saturdays during the summer). A rescheduling fee made sure that in the unlikely event a couple rescheduled their services, the vendor was compensated for selling them not just one day but two.
However, in 2020, many couples, including myself, opted to waive their normal rescheduling fees, which are often an additional 20 to 50 percent. Why make this bad financial choice? As the photographer explained, “[The pandemic] sucks for everybody and [the couple] didn’t ask for it.”
The decision, however, meant selling two days for the price of one during a time when inventory is already limited. Rescheduled weddings from 2020 have claimed days on a vendor’s already limited work calendar that can’t be resold to new clients.
The photographer previously mentioned said that just under 50 percent of her 2021 weddings are postponements from 2020. “All that potential new revenue is just gone,” she said. “It just doesn’t exist because I can’t book on those dates again.”
The result are situations like those of Frances Davis at Hastain Davis Studios. “We’re operating at a loss,” she said. Not that she’s surprised. In 2019, Davis did 20 weddings. In 2020, she did four.
“It’s just heartbreaking to have your savings just spiraling down,” said Davis, who is currently on Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA). “That’s a fucking lifesaver,” she said of PUA. “I wouldn’t be paying my rent right now if I didn’t have that.”
Couples don’t often realize the financial struggles that their vendors are facing, not out of malice but because why would they? They’re rarely wedding vendors or even small business owners. When they request money back, they think it’s because they didn’t get the thing that they bought, not realizing that what they bought wasn’t actually the vendor’s talent but their time.
“I get that the wedding industry has become this uber-service oriented industry and it should be. That’s the whole point,” said one DJ. “However, we shouldn’t be getting taken advantage of because we don’t have any control over this.”
In 2021, the expectation of “uber-service” also means vendors are doing more work for the same money. The DJ referenced a recent conversation she had with a florist. “They were saying that now couples are expecting them to give them multiple quotes: a quote for 25 people, a quote for 40 people, a quote for 200 people.”
While that makes sense from a couple’s point of view — they want to know their options on the very likely chance that they have to change their plans — it means wedding vendors are “doing two or three times the amount of work for the same amount of money,” said the DJ. “Everybody seems to think that’s the industry and that it’s fine because we should just be flexible.”
Ironically, wedding vendors want to be flexible; it’s in their best interests as businesspeople in an industry that runs on online reviews and referrals.
“People who are in the wedding industry are passionate people. We love what we do,” said Davis. “I don't think it’s, ‘I’m just going to chill on unemployment and not try to get any work.’ That's not how people in our business are. They’re very driven.”
Unfortunately, during the pandemic, that drive often comes into conflict with a vendor’s financial health and personal health. Do you work a wedding and risk getting your family sick or do you risk breaking up with a client who might demand a refund, write a bad Yelp review, or, as happened to me last year, threaten to sue?
The above image is a real story told to me by a wedding vendor. The people involved have been anonymized. Illustration: Joie Thongsavath
Your vendors are scared
One photographer I spoke with shot a wedding in January 2021. When she arrived, masked and ready for work, she saw a bench covered in face masks for the guests.
“That pile remained completely untouched for the whole day,” she said. “I didn’t see a single guest wear a mask.” This was most troubling when the guests moved inside after the outdoor ceremony. There were only 14 guests but masks remained off throughout the reception, behavior many vendors report as the norm.
During this same 2021 wedding, a guest approached the photographer.
“It’s good we’re being safe here,” he said as he stood unmasked and less than six feet away from her. "I’ve heard things in the news about people getting infected and sick from weddings."
On his head, he wore a hat: “No. 1 Grandpa.”
“It’s just like, ugh. Don’t you see what a risk this is for you?” the photographer said. “I don't want to see his obituary in two weeks, you know?”
I heard similar stories from other vendors. One DJ shared how the first wedding she worked during the pandemic was “disturbing.”
“Guests were coming up behind me unmasked,” she said. The vendors, meanwhile, remained masked for the entire wedding. “Well, except the photo booth person … I was just really glad that she was far away from me.”
It’s troubling enough to witness behavior that you know spreads a deadly disease but the situation becomes even more difficult when you have to go home at the end of the night. It was the health of her partner that ran through the photographer’s head when she got back from that January 2021 wedding.
“I turned to him and was like, ‘I'm so sorry if I end up being the reason that you get COVID.’”
So, what’s a couple to do?
First, please remember that almost all wedding vendors are individual people.
“These are small businesses,” Davis said. “It’s a human being on the other end of your email or on the other end of your phone call.”
This in mind, I highly encourage all couples to make the final decision for their 2021 wedding plans no later than 60 days before their wedding. That deadline may seem aggressive but it’s what I’ve found to be best for both guests and vendors.
Please also don’t ask for refunds of non-refundable deposits. As I’ve written before, those deposits are non-refundable not because vendors are Scrooge McDuck but because vendors like myself use that money to pay their rent and buy groceries. Deposits are what we live on.
I encourage couples to at least consider paying out part of a balance, too. In most situations when a couple cancels their wedding with a vendor or venue, they don’t owe the balance. This is, in my opinion, why the wedding industry is so adamant about couples not canceling their weddings even when canceling is usually the safest, healthiest choice during a global pandemic.
One way couples can help is to pay a vendor at least part of the outstanding balance, or if the couple is rescheduling their work with the vendor to next year, consider paying the vendor part of the balance in 2021 and the rest in 2022.
Another idea: Discuss a way to have the same services fulfilled but in a safer, healthier way.
One photographer said one of her 2020 couples opted to move her services to a post-wedding day shoot outside with just the couple, a much safer option than having the photographer go to a larger event with people not in her household.
A wedding planner said one couple has decided that if they can’t have their 2021 wedding as currently planned, they’ll ask their vendors to participate in what’s known as a “styled shoot” — a photo shoot that will allow the couple to wear their wedding clothes and get photos and allow their vendors to fulfill their services but on a smaller, safer scale without guests in attendance.
Davis spoke of former clients who offered to buy photo albums from her. “I felt cared for, understood, and valued,” she said of the gesture. “It’s like people were saying, ‘We believe in what you do. Thank you so much for capturing our wedding. We want to support you during this time by purchasing more work from you.’”
Still others said they’ll happily offer gift cards or vouchers for the amount of the deposit, a good option for vendors such as bakers and hair and makeup artists. One DJ is offering couples who cancel the option to “gift” their deposit to another couple or to a school for use at a future event.
It’s as easy as “thank you”
Of course, not all of the models above work for all vendors. Speaking for myself, clients hire me to manage their wedding day. This makes my work as a wedding planner hard to pivot in a pandemic-friendly way. But to have a client cancel their services and still pay out their balance, leave a positive review online, or even just say thank you?
It reminds the people whom you hired that, as Davis puts it: “What we do is important and valuable.” It recognizes that many wedding vendors work weddings because they value empathy, human connection, and joy. “That’s what we do,” said Davis. “We contribute to people’s positive life experience.”
That mission is the motivation that many vendors told me is keeping them going as we face another year of historic loss and unprecedented risk.
“There are very real heartbreaking conversations happening between vendors,” one photographer said. “We’re trying to help couples experience joy while we’re dealing with a very real danger.”
Recognizing that struggle can make all the difference to someone you’ve hired.
“This couple was so gracious,” one DJ recalled of recent clients. “I felt like they really went out of their way to say thank you … Little things like that go a long way.”