Planning a wedding day with the current Covid-19 restrictions is a challenge for a lot of couples. This post shows how your day might look.
It seems so long ago now since Leo Varadkar made his first announcement about Covid-19 in March last year. Little did we know that over a year on, we would still be facing so much uncertainty.
I don’t think there has been an industry impacted as badly as the Wedding industry. Between an outright ban on Weddings at the beginning to ever changing restrictions, its just been a really difficult period for the venues, suppliers and couples.
At least with the Government’s plan for reopening and the Failte Ireland Guidelines, couples have a little bit of certainty around what’s in store.
Depending on where we are at in the Government’s plan, couples will know how many guests they can invite. We also know that the Failte Ireland Guidelines will be in place for foreseeable future.
The current guidelines state that Weddings need to finish by 11pm, with all guests out of the room by 11.30 pm. Along with this, there is no live music allowed.
We were really lucky to be able to get married at the end of 2019 before ‘all of this’ started. When we were planning out the timelines for the day, we were able to plan for a Wedding that went well beyond the 11pm deadline.
However, this 11pm deadline got me thinking about what I ‘would have done’ with timelines if we had to finish our Wedding at 11pm. It would mainly be a case of bringing certain parts of the day forward and making some parts of the day a little shorter.
This would mean, we would not miss out on any of the special moments and our guests would not miss out on any of the fun parts.
I have shown two examples below. One is the actual timeline that I followed for our Wedding Day, and the other is a timeline I think I would have followed if we had to finish by 11pm.
I hope this can help with planning the schedule of your Wedding Day within the current guidelines. I hope it also shows that you can still plan your Day without missing out on any of the fun. 😀
My Schedule
Here’s a quick look at what my schedule was for my Wedding Day. I can’t say everything went exactly to this plan on the day, but its what we had in mind anyway. 🙈
7.30am – Hair Done
9.30am – Make-up Done
10.30 – Photographer Arrives
12.45 – Wedding Car arrives
1pm – Arrival to Church & Ceremony Begins
3pm – Drinks Reception for Guests in Bridge House Hotel
3pm – Wedding Photos with Wedding Party
5pm – Bride & Groom Arrival to Reception
6.30pm – Call to Dinner
6.45pm to 7.30pm – Speeches (along with a little visit from Santa)
9pm – Cutting of the Cake
10pm – First Dance and Band begin playing
12pm – Midnight Feast
12pm – 2am DJ playing
An alternative Schedule
I’ve taken a look at how I think I would plan my Wedding Day if the 11pm curfew was in place. This really involved loads of tweaks, as opposed to any major changes.
It means a slightly earlier start in the morning, and a tighter schedule when getting ready for the ceremony. So maybe a more stressful morning 🙈
It involves having the schedule an hour earlier with shorter gaps then between the ceremony, drinks reception and call to dinner.
Everything else for the evening then would be a little earlier; the speeches, the cutting of the cake, and music playing (unfortunately it cant be a live band). Finally there would still be some time for an evening snack (instead of a midnight feast) and a final hour for guests to enjoy the rest of the reception.
Here is a look at my alternative schedule in full;
7am – Hair Done
8.30am – Make-up Done
9.30 – Photographer Arrives
11.45 – Vintage Car arrives
12pm – Arrival to Church & Ceremony Begins
2pm – Drinks Reception for Guests in Bridge House Hotel
2pm – Wedding Photos with Wedding Party
4pm – Bride & Groom Arrival to Reception
5pm – Call to Dinner
5.15pm to 6pm – Speeches
7.30pm – Cutting of the Cake
8pm – First Dance – and music begins playing (although we know that this cant be a live band unfortunately 😕)
10pm – Evening Snack
10pm – 11pm Final Hour of Music
As I already mentioned, I hope this is helpful to couples who are in the process of planning to get married within these guidelines. But more importantly I hope it shows that there is still loads of time for all fun things that come with your Wedding Day 😁