How the Coronavirus Might Affect Your Wedding...but Don't Freak Out
The rise of the coronavirus has impacted countless amount of industries, specifically related to travel, global outsourcing, and farm trade. Certain resources are becoming limited and unaccessible because we get most of them from overseas. I bet you didn’t even think about the effect it would have on the bridal, wedding & floral industries. Have you thought about where your wedding dress is produced, where your flowers are coming from & where the people on your guest list are traveling from?
*Note: this is not meant to scare or freak you out if you have an upcoming wedding! This is simply to inform you about ways the coronavirus could affect your wedding so that you can take the necessary precautions to make sure you are fully prepared and not taken by surprise at the last minute :)
Photography by Bud Johnson
Your wedding dress will take longer to ship
In case you didn’t already know, a wedding dress takes anywhere from 4-6 months to come in after being shipped. So after coming in for your bridal appointment and saying yes to YOUR dress, you then have to wait to see it again for up to 6 months...a bummer, I know. However, there is a strong chance that the coronavirus will cause that ship date to be even longer.
There are a ton of designers who source their dresses from overseas, specifically China. Even if your dress isn’t fully produced in Asia, elements of your dress will be sourced there (buttons, zippers, fabric etc.). So it is better to be prepared, and anticipate receiving your dress longer than originally planned, based on your designer.
If you haven’t booked your bridal appointment - book it now!
Not all of your guests will be able to travel to you
The most concerning factor since the rise of the coronavirus is travel. Many flights, cruises and events have been cancelled to prevent the risk of spreading the virus. People are afraid being in airports, event venues or anything involving a large amount of people in one place from all over the world. This means that your friends and family from out of town may feel the same way, or are being prevented from traveling.
This gives you a few things to think about, depending on what percentage of your guests would be traveling from out of town and from how far. You might have to expect a smaller wedding than originally planned or moving the wedding date, which would be the LAST resort. Having a lower guest count would mean needing to reach out to all of your vendors to make sure they have a final head count, at least 3 weeks before your wedding. Hiring a wedding planner/coordinator would definitely help balance all of this change and take care of the small details for you.
If you do not currently have a wedding planner or coordinator - click below to learn more about our services!
The flowers you want may no longer be accessible
Our goal as a florist is to make sure you get the exact flowers you want to the best of our ability. However, even on a normal basis sometimes its hard to have access to specific flowers because they may be out of season, or sold out in a certain color or the flower doesn’t even come in the color to begin with - so basically many factors affect flowers already, but now the coronavirus has made it even more difficult to have access to them and has limited the amount of flowers that are available.
LUCKILY, we personally have not had to deal with the direct repercussions of the coronavirus when it comes to our florals, but we are prepared for that issue if it is to occur and we want our brides to be aware of it as well! If this problem were to affect our area, just be prepared to have a smaller variety of flowers or a smaller amount of flowers than you may want.
Photography by Bud Johnson
We know…it’s a lot to think about, but you don’t need to panic. A lot goes into planning a wedding and it doesn’t help to have something you can’t control come and ruin those plans.
Hiring a wedding planner can relieve a lot of stress off of your shoulders, especially during situations like this one. It also helps to have a professional in the industry who has dealt with the countless amount of things that go wrong on wedding days.
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