Your TOP Tips How To Plan a Wedding During COVID-19 in 2021-2022 with

with Candace Zwicker

We are going to be talking about COVID weddings, planning a wedding during a pandemic with Candace Zwicker - an event planner with 20 years in the business. She's the owner of her own event company. Candace and Co. events is a full service, luxury event planning company that plans and designs creative events to tell your story she creates once in a lifetime experiences for clients.

Here are the TOP THOUGHTS & TIPS that Candace shared during our Live Talk with her.

Insights on how to navigate this period of planning a wedding during the quarantine

Have a planner or an expert. It's not that easy to know all the regulations and quickly go from planning to potential Plan B.
Create a mindset. No matter what you do, it will be beautiful. Your guests will be there for you and enjoy the day, and everything will be just awesome. It's an intimate experience with some of your closest or family or good friends that make it incredible. You get pretty much everything and anything you want for the wedding day.
Be flexible with what the situations are, and make the best of them, and readjust everything.
The budget is bigger now. You can pick and choose all the pieces that you want.
Be aware that you're going from a venue that does this every weekend at minimum rates to a backyard where the families have zero experience.

When should pair book vendors? Should they do it much earlier these days?

The venues are already booked into the next year because the dates have shifted. However, because some people went as far as they could, they postponed their wedding to 2022.

Buy out the entire restaurant and have your event and your dinner party at a restaurant. Usually, the buyout costs precisely as much as you would spend on food and beverages elsewhere, so it can even be profitable. In addition, restaurants often have beautiful decor elements, so you save money on this option.

When is the best time to finalize that headcount?

Within a two-week window or less, you know if you can add people. Of course, behind the scenes, there is a lot of redoing floor plans and renting more furniture, and getting more table designs, but you have to wait and see.
Plan for smaller numbers. You can guesstimate a little bit as to where you might be by a specific date. However, don't be sure about that number. We don't know if traveling may be not allowed from other countries. So that changes everything.

Tips for how to cut people off your list?

You don't always have to cut people off the list. Try to divide your guests into several groups. For example, have one group that is there for the ceremony and a nice dinner party. You will always be able to have another celebration with them when the quarantine restrictions disappear.

Then your friends come afterward for an after-party. Of course, in this case, your friends will not get to the ceremony, but you can stream it on your social media. So all groups will be involved in your happy day. Decide what your friends are interested in. Split the group up, and do something amusing and exciting. Categorize people in the areas that they would enjoy.

A top tip for everybody to think of when planning a COVID wedding

Think about one or two or three wow factors that are genuine to who you are. So when your guests come to your event, they're experiencing something that you two enjoy doing.

Come up with some activities that reflect your joy on such an important day. Of course, you can not have loud parties, but you can make an unforgettable day for yourself and your loved ones who are ready to share these emotions with you.