Canceling A Wedding: Emergency And Tragedy
What should I do if I need to cancel my wedding due to death, illness or natural disaster?
If you have to cancel a wedding due to what we call a natural disaster, a death in the family, an illness, something that is beyond your control but that is not a change off heart, meaning that you have decided that you will be getting married because a death in the family does not keep you from getting married. It just often means that either it is a financial burden or you emotionally can not go through the process of getting married. You want to do the exact the same thing. If the invitations have already gone out you need to send a phone call to all of your guests and let them know. That is another really good way to…usually your guests will know that the person passed or will also want to know if you are sick or whatever the case has been. So it is a really good way of spreading the news of whatever has happened. If the invitations have not gone out, you definitely have to send a card of some sort, a note to each guest that would have been invited or even people that could have known about it. And said, “Regretfully, that so and so has passed away in our lives, or unfortunately we are ill or unfortunately financially we can no longer have this wedding.” And things like that are okay to say. It is not shameful to say we can no longer have a wedding. People will still be happy for you that you are getting married. And you still want to remind people that it is a joyous time but you just unfortunately can not fulfil what you thought you could before. People have also asked me they said, “Well, it a year how? And I haven't sent and save the date cards that I'm not going to be getting married” You need to basically decide that on your own. If you feel like enough people know about the wedding, sending a card is appropriate because you don't want people to think they are not getting invited to a wedding that happened. And you don't want there to be any gossip or miscommunication in that regard.
Are there different rules for dealing with vendors if I cancel my wedding because of an emergency?
Cancellation for a death in the family or cancellation for something other than what we call, in the industry, a change of heart. Meaning you just decided that you're not getting married, you don't love that person anymore, whatever it is that you've decided, those type of things are always negotiable. And vendors will have a much easier time giving you the benefit of the doubt if you have someone pass or if you had a huge issue with something like that, or you personally got sick, than just saying, "I've decided not to get married."
What if I anticipate I may have to cancel my wedding due to death or illness in the family?
When you decide to get married, if you know that there is someone who is ill, and you do anticipate that unfortunately before your wedding date, or very close to your wedding date, or even somehow during the planning process that person could pass away, you want to adjust accordingly. So I even have had people who have postponed weddings and said, you know they have booked me and they have said "We want to get married but someone got sicker than we anticipated, the illness progressed rapidly." Things like that. You want to definitely prepare for those things. So if you know ahead of time, that if someone passes away it is going to affect you being able to get married either financially, physically, emotionally, whatever it is, you need to select vendors who are flexible. So you need to say that unfortunately we do have someone that is sick in our family. And be very upfront with these vendors. Say "what are your parameters, what do I need to do if this were to happen that I need to change my date?" You do not ever want to put yourself up into a position of fail. You want to make sure that you know exactly what your parameters are, what you can and can not do. And in the long run if it turns out that you just say "look I can not find enough people to basically accommodate me, you just need to put it on hold. I have definitely had people that have decided to get married and some people physically say, "I want to be married. I am in love with this person. I do not want to wait. But maybe we will wait to have the celebration." And in that case it is really appropriate to send an announcement to say, we are the new Mr. and Mrs. and our party will be here soon.
What if I have to postpone my wedding?
If you decide to postpone a wedding, usually the factors include several different things. Maybe you do have a financial hardship that you didn't expect, maybe you got laid off, maybe the person who is paying for the wedding got laid off, or maybe like we have mentioned before there is an illness, or maybe even it's one of those things where you're not necessarily sure if you're going to be getting married. Postponing a wedding is actually a lot easier than cancelling, so before you completely cancel, if part of you is still thinking I may, may get married, go ahead and postpone. Usually vendors will say, you can change your date with me up to a year as long as I have that date available. So check with that vendor. Let's say that you booked a wedding for January of 08 and you decide I'm going to wait until January of 09 -- well great, you're pushing it off, you're pushing it off -- just remember that if you decide that you're going to cancel, let them know as soon as possible. There are definite caveats to the contracts. If you decide to postpone, sometimes a vendor will say, well your contract with me said you were going to have a wedding on "x'' day, you postponed and now you're cancelling, so maybe they will keep the full amount of the money, so you definitely want to feel out both options.
