How I we organized my big fat Nepalese wedding during the pandemic!

To prepare, organize, risk assess and plan my big day according to the ‘ever-changing’ government guidelines was bound to make an absolute Bridezilla – instead, I was a Zen Creature rejoicing every second of the many resolute wedding rituals that unfolded in perfect harmony..

Now, we know planning a wedding is often considered stressful and I’m certain couples who tied the knot in 20/21 were tested to great heights for a simple ceremony of love. In my case, however, I was served all that with an added bonus; my fiancé, a permanent resident of the USA.

In this blog, I wish to share a few tips and tricks that may help couples around the world who find themselves in a similar situation, or if you’re just curious how we were able to pull off the event despite unavoidable challenges that lay before us. Compromise in due diligence and it would commit us responsible for the wellbeing of our guests to the deadly virus lurking amongst us.

Firstly, I hope you noticed the word ‘I’ has been replaced with ‘we’ – this ‘we’ is my dear family whose wide participation in challenging the obstacles made it all viable. I honestly don’t think it would be at all possible, without the exceptional devotion and teamwork my family demonstrated to put together my fairy tale wedding but I won’t go any further into this just now, a blog for another time perhaps..

1. Research and Prepare

Stay updated with covid guidance at all times

My family and I constantly found ourselves debating over almost everything, even the things we had already debated over got debated over. To go Nepal or not to go (shop for all the little things required for a Nepalese Wedding) whilst the country was red-listed by the UK government. To invest a sum of money, booking a venue or not to book. To book a large venue or small – we weren’t even sure how our guests would respond to the invitation. Very rightfully, there was a huge possibility our guests would politely turn the invitation down. And the biggest doubt; whether we should postpone the wedding altogether or if things would take a turn for the better by the proposed time..

That bit above drained us completely. We knew we had different opinions for every different scenario but what we always found agreement in was the fact that we were not going to compromise the government guidance and as a professional family we ought to use our expert judgement and intuition to deem the situation. With two members of the family employed by the NHS, I felt rehearsed with Hands, Space and Face guidance, trusted our ability to make conscious decisions, constantly stayed updated with regulations and staying informed with local news.

Mindset

I strongly believe our mindset had a huge role to play in this project. I would advise couples and wedding planners to really strengthen their mindset – be ready for drawbacks, cancellations, delays and uncertainties. How does one keep on top of the game with all the unpredictability, you ask? Well, start by asking yourself what matters the most to you. Not just in this moment – obviously your answer will be the wedding matters the most, but I encourage you to think deeper, what matters the most at every moment of our lives? Lives? Precisely! Once you understand that the one most important thing is your life and your wellbeing, even before your wedding or your financial investment, etc. you truly begin to allow your brain to make rational decisions. My family and I adjusted our mindset completely. We were willing to cease all preparations at any given time. We fully comprehended that the wedding, no matter how far we were into the planning, we were ready to drop it all if we didn’t feel safe at any given point.

Do read the famous orange book by Mark Mason this may help shape your thought process for things that matter.

Compromise

Definition of Compromise: an agreement or a settlement of a dispute that is reached by each side making concessions.

This gloomy word was inevitable for my family and me whilst planning the wedding. If I had to list a few compromises I had to make: –

a) Holiday to a different country for the sole purpose of shopping, to India for Manish Malhotra and Nepal for finest Nepalese wedding props

b) A week-long Bachelorette party in Magaluf

c) Inviting everybody my memory could serve – many of my near and dear ones unable to attend due to overseas travel restrictions

Ok time to go back to the mindset I’d been channeling – Om… (I chant). Poof! The dark cloud is all but gone, for I know without the wellbeing of me and my families’ health, shopping in India or a wild party in Magaluf would mean ever so little.

2. Launch

Virtual Invitation

We opted for a virtual invitation, mainly to eliminate printing/posting hassle, provided in today’s digital age, I feel the world of weddings and online invitations has changed drastically. With the explosion of popularity in social media, people are increasingly spending more of their time glued to their digital devices. Consequently, posts and other traditional mediums expose one to indirect contact transmission. There are various reliable wedding invitation services on the rise, like Greenvelope, that offer premium virtual wedding invite services.

However, to reduce the cost further, we relied on our design skills and produced a simple but informative poster and circulated it amongst our invitees’ list: –

• Please note the example invitation posters below has my home address removed for confidential reasons – The venue is obviously a key detail on your invite!

Few reasons why virtual invitation won the race for us: –

1. Avoid indirect contact transmission
2. Faster response
3. Much cheaper than printing / posting
4. No delivery mistakes
5. Environmentally friendly

Questionnaire / Risk Assessment Documentation

As we didn’t use a premium wedding invitation service, like Greenvelope, which would have instantly collated all responses into bite-size, organized data, we were now left with a lot of admin work. Many responded to the invite via social media/instant messaging or phone calls, hence we had details scattered across our inbox or even pieces of paper.

Furthermore, there were an additional set of questions we requested from our guests as part of the Risk Assessment. Google Forms and Microsoft Excel did the trick for us as it was easy to use and readily available.

Understanding the Risks of the Pandemic and ensuring everyone is vaccinated

If you and your guests are vaccinated, there is a much lower risk of contracting the virus. You will also be helping to protect your wedding guests on the day.

We contacted and recommended many of our elderly and vulnerable guests not to attend the ceremony or informed them why we deemed it unsuitable to forward the invitation their way. Needless to say, we respected every decision made.

As the feedback rolled in my family and I grew further confident and optimistic for the success of the event and the wellbeing of our guests. By the end of the tally, we were proud to announce 92.6% of adults attending, had both their vaccinations, leaving a mere 7.4% (mainly young adults) awaiting their second dose.

Find ways to keep guests comfortable

Despite the assurance with vaccines, we recommended all our guests to do the rapid lateral flow test prior to attending, advised them to wear medical surgical masks when indoors and sanitize every hour.

Although the wedding ceremony was located in Shri Sanatan Hindu Mandir, my house was to host a number of ceremonies – Janti Bhitrai, Bihe Bhoj, Bidaai, etc.

In order to ensure covid safety we had a number of measures in place: –

1. Shop designer Sanitizer Dispensers sanitizerforhomes.com
2. Safety Signs
3. Temperature Measurement Device
4. Medical Surgical masks
5. Lateral flow Tests
6. Part open garden setting
7. Portaloo

Luck

Finally, once the event was over we were told how lucky we were for everything to have unfolded so beautifully. Lucky that non of our guests reported covid symptoms or positive test results, lucky the restrictions had eased, lucky for UK weather to have spared us some rain, lucky our neighbors lent us their garden, lucky Andrew passed his ‘Test to Release’ scheme, etc. Now, I can’t deny the fact that I am lucky and lucky in many ways I am – but I too believe that luck is where preparation meets opportunity. And we prepared with all our might to have had this opportunity of a fruitful ending indeed.