For months all I have heard from friends and family as I expressed my ever present concern over my Fall 2021 wedding was:

“Don’t worry, that’s so far away!”

“Your wedding will be fine, but the poor people getting married in 2020!”

“Why are you so worried? That’s so far away!”

(PS, never say things like this to a bride who is anxious about her wedding, it doesn’t help)

Well, all of my fears over my wedding being impacted have come true. (queue crying emojis here). If you follow me on Instagram you may have already seen this news but I felt like it was important to share this post as well, after all, I have shared everything else about may wedding planning process so why not?!

The Tuesday morning after Thanksgiving (aka my first week in our new house) I saw an email from our venue with the subject line: A Message from Wiens Family Cellars. I opened the email and the first line said that the venue regretted to inform us that our wedding had been cancelled. Honestly, my first thought was “oh shit! Did we miss a payment???” Turns out no, we did not (especially since no payments were due for another 9 months!) but rather our venue had decided that in light of Covid and the ever changing landscape of events in California it was in the best interest of the venue and the couples to cancel all events on the books. (***Full disclosure, I still love our venue and would get married their in a heartbeat if it was an option)

I was stunned! I called Chris at work and broke the news to him. We literally just spoke in total confusion and disbelief about what happened. I immediately tried to call the venue which didn’t go well for me since it was only 8am (ha). I finally chatted with our contact at the venue and began processing the reality that after 18 months of planning our wedding I was going to have to start all over with 11 months to do it.

Grab a cup of coffee (or glass of wine) because we aren’t finished yet.

When Chris first proposed we both discussed having a long engagement, taking our time planning, and enjoying the engaged stage of life. I also 1000% did not want the stress of trying to plan our wedding in a short amount of time. We waited 6 months to even look at venues and book something. I had just started locking in vendors. I was about to order my dress when this news came crashing down. Because of how I felt about rushing to plan something and the fact that we just moved to Santa Barbara we decided we weren’t going to look at venues with November 2021 availability. We decided to totally change our location all together (more on that in a minute) and decided to postpone our wedding a year. (yup, all the ugly crying emojis you can think of)

So, now what? Well, I have started researching new venues closer to our new Santa Barbara home and have seen a few proposals and guess what??? They are all at least TWICE as much! Because we had booked so early we were locked in for 2018 pricing and now that so many people have cancelled or postponed their 2020 and early 2021 weddings prices are astronomical. Oh, we are also back on lockdown in Southern California so Chris and I can’t actually go tour any venues at the moment (good times). We do have a loose plan to spend a weekend in the Santa Ynez Valley soon to look at venues and hopefully pull the trigger on a new date and location. In the meantime, I will be looking for a new hair and makeup person, new bakery, new rental company, new wedding coordinator, new hotel for us and our guests, new rehearsal dinner location, and generally trying not to cry.

Oh, and the best part? We just sent our Save The Dates at the end of October.

In all seriousness, I am fine. Chris is fine. We are sad and we are disappointed but we are also so lucky to have a venue that gave us a refund, a photographer with flexibility to move our date, and a florist who hadn’t made us sign a contract yet. I promise to share all the updates as we look a new venues and continuing the #onceuponacline planning.

XO, Niki