The Emotional Toll of Coronavirus Weddings: Feel, Grieve, Tune In and Get Decisive

Cancelled bachelorette parties.  (Replaced with Zoom happy hour with all friends donning coordinating tanks? Cute but sad.)  Virtual wedding dress shopping.  (Ummm who takes your measurements? Unclear. Where do I find a measuring tape?)  Lots of cute swag purchased with an original coronavirus date (Helloooo those adorbs cocktail napkins with 4/11/20 emblazoned in metallic ink).  The Coronavirus pandemic has destroyed the best laid plans, wedding plans included.  How can “nearlyweds” process how this global trauma has impacted their plans, hopes and dreams for their long-awaited wedding day?

If you have had to cancel or postpone your wedding, if you had gotten engaged and put wedding planning on hold, you are entitled to grieve.  You are entitled to feel whatever sense of loss you are feeling, be it subtle or devastating. You are entitled to be angry as hell. Yes, this coronavirus thing did indeed just sabotage the day your heart has been bursting to see come to life.  You are entitled to be wrecked.

In fact, you must allow yourself the time and space to feel all of this, the devastation, the disappointment, and the anger.  This is not optional. Not giving yourself the opportunity to grieve and rage keeps those feelings stuck inside, so they may linger beneath the surface, sabotaging your best efforts to move forward.  Not processing emotional pain will not only cause you to feel bad and stuck for longer; it will also prevent you from being able to move forward with the freedom to make important decisions about what to do next.  Emotional confusion and stuckness fog the eyes and the heart, preventing you from seeing and thinking clearly about what to do next, which you will have to do.

I have heard from brides who are sad and stressed and pissed, but who invalidate themselves and their pain, comparing the relative loss of their anticipated wedding fantasy coming to life to the loss of lives, the loss of jobs, loss of security for millions of people across the globe.  Listen, I get it, there are people who have it worse than you right now. And, this is what you need to understand: your pain is just as valid as theirs, and everyone else’s. You are not selfish to feel heartbroken. No one has a monopoly on suffering now. So validate your pain, feel it hard, and then... move on when you’re ready.  There won’t be a predictable timeline for this.  

Decisions will now have to be made.  Decisions about rescheduling, if your colors are appropriate for a different season, etc.  You may have the impulse to turn to friends and family for feedback, for guiding these decisions, for venting, and for validating how flippin’ messed up this all is.  Pay attention, however, to how much you are relying on friends and family for this feedback, guidance and validation. They might “get” it but not reaaallllly GET it. They might not truly grasp the full extent of the confusion and the grief; in fact, your partner might not either.  

Given this, be cautious about depending heavily on your family and friend’s opinions, recommendations and feelings about rescheduling, cancelling, postponing, or pausing, because, simply, they are not you.  They may be disappointing in some ways - not fully attuned or fully validating, looking for the silver lining when you want to punch the silver lining in the face, or putting their own concerns (health, travel, financial or otherwise) before concerns about the wedding.

This is a time for tuning in internally, letting your intuition inform what happens next, and getting really clear about your priorities, as an individual and as a couple.  This is time for feeling deeply, and from that place of connecting with yourself, inviting your rational mind online to make important decisions that are in line with your long-term values and goals.  This is a time for connecting with your partner, perhaps in a new way, and cultivating a reciprocal curiosity and interest in each other’s feelings, needs and desires. This is a time for determining together how you will support each other and navigate crises; this will not be the last in your lifelong partnership.

This process and the decisions that come out of it will look different for every #coronacouple.  There are likely no right or wrong answers. There is only what feels right and good for you.