Planning a covid safe wedding

The worldwide covid pandemic has changed the way we celebrate life’s greatest moments. But as communities around the world begin to get vaccinated, larger celebrations will once again be possible. Planning a covid safe wedding is very important. Putting in place additional safeguards protects those you love and ensures you still have the best day of your lives.

Here’s our top tips for planning a covid safe wedding

Spare face masks

Most people have their own mask to wear. But from time to time people lose or forget their masks. So make sure you have a disposable mask supply available for guests to put on. Set up a table with the additional masks and a sign asking guests to take one if they need one. Alternatively have your ushers offer masks to those wedding guests who don’t have a mask.

If you are getting married at a reception centre, you might find they have a mask supply available for easy distribution to wedding guests who have forgotten their own.

Advising wedding guests of safe distance requirements

One of the best ways to prevent the spread of the virus is for your guests to stand a little further apart than they may have before. Most wedding venues will display signs that remind wedding guests about how far apart they should stand from one another.

It can also be useful for your celebrant to remind wedding guests of their obligations to stand apart from one another. Alternatively print up some signs yourselves to remind your guests to socially distance.

It’s important to have someone at your wedding who can keep an eye on your guests during your celebration. With a gentle and kind manner they can then remind guests to socially distance if people are getting a little too cosy!

covid safe Hydration

Whether your wedding celebrations are a dry affair or a party fuelled by copious amounts of alcohol, your wedding guests must be offered water. Before the pandemic, you could simply place water jugs at various places around your venue with glasses for self service.

However, this approach is not the most hygienic as many guests will handle water glasses and the same water jugs.

A better approach is to have wait staff offer water by the glass or bottle.

Let them eat cake

Planning to serve your wedding cake as dessert? Make sure you have thought about how that cake will be served up to wedding guests. Again, whilst you could cut the cake and offer self service, you run the risk of multiple guests touching the same cake server and plates.

Instead I recommend having your cut cake by your venue and offered to guests on plates individually. Alternatively, you could put slices of your cake into cake boxes which are properly sealed that wedding guests can taken home as your guest gift. 

Guest signing table

Signing tables are magnets for crowds of wedding guests, keen to leave you messages of love and support in your guest book.

To be super safe and to minimise cross contamination of items on your signing table, here are some ideas to consider:

Ask guests to use their own pen to sign your guest book

Leave a pen for each guest at their chair as a guest gift. Ask them to write their words of love and support on a small card you place at each table setting and have them place it in a box at your signing table. After the wedding, you can place those cards into a guest book yourselves

Most guests will attend your wedding with a smart phone. Ask guests to email messages of love and support to one of your email addresses (or create one especially for your wedding day). Print those out after your wedding and pop them in your guest book or create a digital guest book instead

Nominate someone to wipe down pens at your guest book signing table to reduce the transfer of germs

Hand Sanitiser

Most wedding venues will be required to supply hand sanitiser throughout the space. Ask to see your wedding venue’s covid safe plan to confirm this.

If you would prefer to have more hand sanitiser stations, add some of your own in the space. You can even create cute signs to remind people to sanitise or alternatively offer mini size sanitisers as your guest gift complete with a personalised label.

Music matters

Is a band or DJ performing at your wedding? Your venue needs plenty of space for your band to set up and perform. Covid safe requirements reflect that they must be a specific distance from your wedding guests. Band members also need to be distanced from one another.

Check the requirements for these distances in your local area. Assign someone to check compliance throughout your celebration.

Plan ahead

Sit down with your wedding planner and wedding venue staff and have a think about where your wedding guests will be at every point across your wedding day.

Consider how you will handle times when people are most likely to “huddle up” like when they are dancing, listening to speeches, watching you cut the cake and so on.

Making sure that all your loved ones will be safe throughout the day, will put your mind at ease so you can focus on getting married!

Wedding vendor covid safe plans

Get in touch with each of your wedding vendors to make sure they have a covid safe plan in place. This plan will cover off on things like when they will wear face masks, how they will monitor their staff, how they will interact with others in your venue and so on.

Plan your day well by having vendors come to your venue(s) ahead of time when they won’t interact with others and ensure they have a policy in place that none of their staff will work if they or their family members are unwell.

Consult your wedding venue on their covid safe plan

In light of the worldwide covid pandemic, wedding venues have worked hard to put in place new processes and procedures to ensure wedding couples and guests are safe at all times. Ask your venue what they have adjusted in the venue to ensure guest safety.

Some specific areas you should head about include:

  • How often the bathrooms will be cleaned
  • Frequency of cleaning of door handles, tables and fixtures
  • How they handle matters when the dancefloor is too crowded
  • Where hand sanitisation stations will be placed and how often they will be checked to make sure they contain enough hand sanitiser
  • How they track your wedding guests and will follow up in the case of a covid case at the venue
  • Staff briefing protocols in place
  • How they space tables and other furniture to allow guests to move freely but safely
  • Ventilation adjustments
  • Glassware and plateware adjustments to ensure there is no cross contamination
  • How food will be served to adhere to all covid safe requirements
  • How they will manage wedding guest flow with well marked entry and exit points
  • The plan for condiments, utensils and menus

You should draw confidence from wedding venue staff who are able to confidently and articulately explain the specific changes they have made. If you don’t get the sense that your wedding venue staff are taking this matter seriously, consider a different venue.

Compliance monitoring on the day

It’s really important to understand who will oversee your celebration from a covid safe perspective. If you are marrying at home or planning a DIY wedding, nominate someone who can keep an eye on proceedings. This person can speak with guests gently, calmly and politely should any breaches occur.

This is not a job for the faint hearted. And it isn’t fair to assign this job to someone who is going to be uncomfortable with this responsibility.

If you are getting married at a venue, the venue should nominate someone to ensure the celebration is covid safe. Ask how the venue goes about rectifying any problems across the celebration. This should include asking them what sort of language they’ll use to remind guests to be covid safe.

Wedding photography

If you have your heart set on a wedding group shot, that can still happen. Chat with your photographer about the best way to still achieve this, whilst keeping all of your loved ones safe.

Wedding photographers have been living in this covid era with you. So they will have had plenty of practice finding creative ways to take larger group photographs without compromising on the overall feel of the shot.

Farewell celebration

You and your lover are about to exit stage left after your best day ever. Pre covid, there would have been hugs and kisses galore as you made your way around your circle of wedding guests, before heading off into the sunset.

You don’t need to throw the farewell circle tradition out altogether. But you do need to think laterally about ways you can still receive those loved up vibes from your wedding guests as you head off.

Some great alternatives include a sparkler send off where the excitement is created by guests holding sparklers. Standing in two lines with sparklers able, they create a walk way in between for the two of you to leave your party. Now that’s an exit (and a photographer’s dream!).

Or how about playing a super up beat tune that will have your guests dancing solo dances around the room with the two of you in the middle for one last high energy song before you leave.

Instruments such as clackers and small tambourines also create one epic celebration out of your farewell circle. Instead of hugging and kissing every single wedding guest, you walk through two lines of guests making some noise for the two of you. It’s festive and you’ll definitely feel the love.

Absent guests

It is an unfortunate truth that some loved ones may not be able to make it to your wedding. This global pandemic has certainly cause havoc for wedding guests. If some guests cannot make it to your wedding, there are ways to make them feel special.

Send them a special hamper to enjoy on your wedding day, send them a text or hand written note before the day to let them know you’ll be thinking of them or record or live stream your wedding ceremony so they can still attend…virtually.

Love is not cancelled

The world has changed. So too have the ways couples celebrate their weddings.

But the covid pandemic doesn’t mean you have to give up on your day of love. With a strong and professional team of wedding vendors behind you and supportive family and friends, your day will still be the happiest day of your lives.

Need a hand pulling together your wedding? Re-planning your postponed wedding and feeling a little bummed? Get in touch. Hey Lovers can help.

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