Because COVID has messed up our wedding plans and has made 2021 an uncertainty, we’ve had to think outside the box on how to make our wedding special while ensuring everyone’s safety. After a lot of thought and discussion, we have come up with a new idea—instead of a wedding day, we are going to have a wedding year!
What’s a wedding year? It’s a series of smaller, more intimate celebrations spread throughout the year.
**Update – given the vaccine schedule, we’re now planning to do two big wedding parties, as we had originally planned–one in July in Michigan and one in October in Phoenix. But we’re still going to do some smaller celebratory “events” throughout the year. We’ll then end the wedding year with our honeymoon.
Each big event will be a unique celebration with its own special wedding ceremony.
A wedding year allow us to celebrate with more of our friends and family but in a much safer manner. We won’t have to miss out on the wedding aspects we looked forward to doing, and it will give us flexibility in the event COVID continues to ruin our plans. Best of all, this will allow us to spend far more quality time with each of you—which is really what wedding parties are supposed to be all about.
To be able to celebrate with every and ensure that our celebrations are appropriately safe, not all of the events will be open to everyone. However, we’ll keep track of the fun and will post about each of events here for all to enjoy.
Regardless of any given event, we still want to celebrate with everyone we can. So we encourage you—especially if you can’t attend “your event”—to reach out to us to schedule a private in-person or an online / Zoom-type celebration with us. Seriously, let’s make it happen.
We encourage you to keep checking back to this page, as we will document any changes to our plan here or in the linked pages. Or just check in with us directly.
Voting for our “one year” anniversary trip
However, before we get to the (draft) Wedding Year Schedule, we want to make sure you are aware that you can participate in a two-tier voting opportunity to vote where we go for our “one year” anniversary trip. Click below for more details!
The (draft) Wedding Year Schedule
Because it’s 2020 (and now 2021, but it still feels like 2020), everything is subject to change, but here’s what we have in mind so far:
December
- December 5, 2020 – Our wedding ceremony in Phoenix, Arizona
July
- July 17, 2021 – Michigan celebration in Scottville, Michigan
October
- October 23, 2021 – Phoenix celebration – depending on the heat and COVID, will be at either an outside pavilion or an indoor location.
November
- Umbrella Drunk celebration – November 10-15 in Turks and Caicos
- Party with Jen’s work colleagues – date TBD
December
- Tentatively Scheduled December 2nd or 4th – Stories and Speeches – Online Zoom Happy Hour for all attendees to participate in telling a story about the bride and/or groom or giving a speech/words of sentiment. We want this to be a fun send-off for our honeymoon!
- Our Honeymoon (currently looking at Africa or the South Pacific, or if places aren’t getting vaccinations as quickly as we’d like, it will be to whatever country or countries that are vaccinated and we can spend 3 weeks visiting)
We appreciate everyone’s kind words and support as we’ve attempted to navigate 2020 (and continue to do so throughout 2021) and figure out the best way to celebrate our marriage.
We are so lucky to have one another. And we look forward to making memories, not just with one another, but with everyone we care about.