First off, thank you so much for all of your kind words and comments on my wedding post from earlier this week 🤍 I was shocked by how many of you had already changed your wedding plans or were in the process of deciding to.
Based on the responses I initially received, I decided I wanted to do this Q&A follow up post. Many of the questions I received were similar, so I thought that it would be best to answer them completely here on the blog. Here we go…
Q: Are you still having a bachelorette party and a shower?
A: This was the top question I received across the board. It’s also the first question many friends and family members asked. The answer is yes, we are going to try to do both! My two MOHs had already started planning my bachelorette way before we decided to change our plans. If anything, I want to have a bachelorette now more than ever because I know my closest friends won’t be there with me on our actual wedding day. Obviously everything is subject to change, but we weren’t planning on traveling far and were already keeping COVID-19 top of mind. As far as a shower goes, we have a date and are hoping for the best! Again, we’re keeping a close watch on everything and taking into account all safety measures.
Q: If you are having a bachelorette party and a shower how do you decide who comes now that they’re no longer going to your wedding?
A: I thought this was a good question. Again, for my bachelorette my MOHs and I already had a guest list and nothing has changed. For the shower, we’re keeping it on the smaller side, so my mom, mother-in-law and I all made a list of who we want to attend. It’s primarily family, my bridal party and close friends of my mom and MIL.
Q: How did you pick only family to attend your wedding?
A: I touched on this in my initial blog post, but given that we had a 225 person guest list, this was really the only way we wanted to cut our list. We tried different combinations of 50, 75, 100 and ultimately had a difficult time. We both have decent sized families, our bridal party was 20 people (40 with guests who we would also want to be there) and our parents both have large groups of friends. If we tried to go under 50, we were eliminating people who were in our bridal party, their significant others, aunts, uncles, cousins and just personally didn’t want to do it.
For us, cutting down to just our parents and siblings made things a lot easier for Bill and I. This definitely might not be the case for everyone, but we’re both very close with each other’s parents and siblings so it made sense for us.
Q: How are you planning on accommodating your guests? At the rental house or a hotel?
A: This was another popular question. Everyone will be staying in the rental house. The house is big enough for both sets of our parents, our siblings and their significant others. For the most part, we’ve all traveled together in some way, shape or form before so this was an easy decision. Having everyone in the same place makes things logistically easier, and since we’re getting married and having the reception in the backyard of the house, it made the most sense. We spent a lot of time on Airbnb and VRBO before ultimately working with a realtor to find the final house!
One note on renting a house — we were floored by the amount of people who we reached out to on both Airbnb and VRBO that said we were the 5th, 6th, 7th, etc. couple who had asked them to rent their property for a small wedding. Granted we were only looking on Nantucket, but it was surprising. Also surprising, most of the people we spoke with on both sites were completely okay with (and excited about) us getting married at their houses. It was definitely a pleasant surprise as we were expecting to experience the opposite reaction. We made sure to be extremely upfront about what we were looking to use their property for, which people seemed to appreciate. Basically this is a long way of saying that if you’re looking to rent a home for your wedding it might not be as difficult as you think!
Q: Will you share your Nantucket rental afterwards?
A: Sure, I don’t see why not. The only reason I wouldn’t would be if the owner or relator asked us not to. Very excited about the house we booked. It’s perfect and I feel like we got really lucky. I couldn’t have dreamed up something better.
Q: How did you find hair and makeup? Or are yours traveling?
A: This is another good question. Before we changed our wedding plans I was excited to work with a lovely local hair stylist Amber and a local makeup artist. When we changed our plans I had to let both of them know that I was cancelling. I was sad to cancel with them, but being that we are now having a destination wedding it made the most sense from a financial standpoint.
For our new wedding plans on Nantucket I’ll be using a local hair and makeup salon. I found the salon through someone I know who got married on the island and I trust her opinion. After she told me about them, and I did my own research on Instagram, I decided that they looked like a good fit and booked. I’m going to try and schedule a hair and makeup trial for March of 2021!
Q: Are you still wearing your original dress?
A: Yes, I am! I love my dress and my veil (maybe even more than the dress) and am 100% wearing it for our wedding. Everyone is still dressing as if it’s the formal wedding we originally planned even though it’s now happening in a backyard. Very excited about the dress and can’t wait to try it on early next year!
If anyone is looking for a great dress shopping experience, I highly recommend A Little Something White in Darien. It’s where I got my dress and I know so many others who have too.
Q: Did you lose a lot of money in deposits?
A: Yes, we lost our venue, band and church deposits. We knew that losing deposits was a possibility when we changed our plans and therefore are okay with it. That being said, we were lucky enough to have our photographer and florist stay on, so we didn’t lose those deposits and still get to work with them. Couldn’t be happier about that.
Q: Who is catering your Nantucket wedding?
A: Last week we booked Island Kitchen. I talked to a few different catering companies, but ultimately loved everything Island Kitchen had to offer. They also cater everything out of their (very cute) trucks, which I love since we want to minimize the amount of vendors in and out of the house. They will also handle all of our rental furniture. Very excited to work with them. I found them via a Nantucket wedding that was featured on Over The Moon (one of my all-time favorite sites).
Q: Are you going on a honeymoon? If so, have you started planning?
A: Ideally yes, we want to go on our honeymoon right after we get married! Pre-COVID we were planning on going to Hawaii and are still considering that as an option. Another option we’re heavily considering is the California coast, starting in Napa and then heading down to LA with lots of stops along the way. It’s something we’ve always wanted to do as a couple and with so much unknown about traveling right now it kind of seems like a perfect fit. One of my friends just went to California on her honeymoon and her photos made me love the idea of it even more.
These were the main questions I received, and I hope this Q&A was helpful. Excited to share more as we continue to plan. As always, if you have any questions feel free to shoot me a DM on Instagram and send me an email!