The pandemic has been devastating for brides and grooms hoping to tie the knot this spring and summer. Many have canceled or postponed their big days, while others have opted for intimate ceremonies and elopements. We consulted celebrant and microwedding expert Alisa Tongg. Read on to hear her thoughts and advice.
For those who don’t know, explain to us what a microwedding is and what it entails!
A microwedding is a wedding celebration scaled down to just the essentials. Like a traditional wedding day, a microwedding can typically include portraiture (first look with sweetheart and parent); personal ceremony, remembrance and vows; first dance and dance with parents; speeches and toasts; family style dinner, cake and cutting; and maybe even a sparkler send off. But instead of 100 people in attendance, it is maybe about 20 to 30—the inner circle of loved ones of the couple. The day ends up feeling more like a very special family holiday—a holiday to celebrate you getting married and a joining of families.
Photo by M2 Photography
You were able to open your outdoor elopement ceremony space, Promise Ridge, a month early when quarantine and social-distancing was starting to take effect. Tell us about that!
I had a couple whose big wedding plans were changing, and as their officiant, they called me as soon as their venue made the announcement, to try and figure out what their options were and how to proceed. The bride is a nurse and she knew that she could not handle more months or even a year of delaying the start of her marriage. They also were in the fortunate position of already have secured their marriage license before the Pennsylvania courthouses closed, so we brainstormed ways that they could be flexible by delaying their larger celebration and pivoted to a microwedding ceremony on their original wedding date.
As an ordained minister, I am fortunate to be able to still provide the service of conducting people’s legal marriage ceremonies, and my at-home outdoor ceremony space out on the ridge made for an obvious solution for location during a pandemic. Because we had already been working together to create their ceremony for their original big wedding celebration, it was not difficult to adjust their original love-story based ceremony into one that would be appropriate for the new circumstances.
Now for the Living Wall, which is the ceremony backdrop for all the wedding ceremonies here at Promise Ridge, early April is a challenging time to find plants that are both beautiful and can thrive in the transition between winter and spring temperatures. Opening Promise Ridge’s ceremony space early for Mary and Mike forced me to consider a new plant to feature in the Living Wall—hellebores. Oh my gosh, they are so beautiful, they look like an oil painting in real life. And I later found out that Mary’s original bouquet design was to feature hellebores as well. I took this is as a sign that we were doing the right thing.
Photo by Harper Parker
It’s an extremely difficult time for couples that had planned on spring and summer 2020 weddings. Do you see professionals in the wedding industry working to help devastated couples that can no longer say “I do” on their original wedding dates?
Yes! All of the wedding professionals I know are doing everything in their power to give couples a beautiful start to their marriage, wherever and whenever that will be. Everyone (couples, parents and wedding professionals) will be best served if they can remember to be flexible and keep focused on what the most important thing is—whether that’s starting their marriage or making sure that their inner circle of loved ones can travel and be there. The wedding industry is also made up of mostly very small businesses, many of which are date-based in their rates/income. The couples who lost their original date this spring are not the only ones devastated. So I’ve seen wedding pros, who are not available for the new date a couple selects, do whatever they can to still provide that couple with service. For photographers, that could look like having an associate photographer shoot on the new wedding date and then the original photographer edits and delivers the photographs. Despite the crisis, it’s been heartwarming to see how everyone is pulling together to help these couples affected.
What options would you say couples have right now?
Elopement or microwedding ceremony and celebration now, and larger celebration later. Many couples are worried that if they get married now, that it will take some of the specialness from their big wedding celebration, but I think the opposite will happen. We are in the middle of a worldwide pandemic, it’s a crisis and for two people to recognize each other as their safe harbor, shelter in the storm, their certainty in an uncertain time—and commit to be partners and share in all that life brings, as a team—well, I think that is very romantic. A couple who does this will have a lot of rich details and stories to draw from when writing their vows for their big postponed wedding.
The other option is to postpone the larger wedding and extend engagement until it’s safe again to gather in large groups.
Photo by With Love & Embers
Have a large number of couples reached out to you about micro-ceremony options recently? Are you all booked up at this point?
I am personally booked up for pretty much every Saturday through the remainder of the year. Fridays, Sundays and Thursdays are also very popular for microweddings, because the couple can usually engage a dream vendor (photographer, video, florist, HMU artist) who might have already been booked on prime Saturday dates. With an already small group of people to assemble at a microwedding, it’s not out of the question to select a weekday for everyone to celebrate. Couples who go this route will reap the rewards of an even greater value in each purchase.
What are some of the logistics of changing plans to a microwedding ceremony last minute?
Paring down guest list is biggest challenge, and then navigating the closed courthouses in Pennsylvania. Several counties have pivoted to offer an online application process with a follow video call with a clerk to issue a marriage license, but the availability of this option and the residency or emergency restrictions are on a county-by-county basis. York county was the first one that I was aware of to adapt in this way, and the good news is that in Pennsylvania, a valid marriage license from any Pennsylvania county can be used in any part of the state.
Photo by With Love & Embers
Tell us about your Wedding Ceremony Master Class for Friend Officiants. How can that aid engaged couples right now?
Half of all couples marrying this year will ask a friend or family member to officiate their wedding ceremony because they want it to be personal, warm and genuine. The only problem is that creating the type of “love and laughter filled” wedding experience you thought that friend/family member would be perfect for delivering, is harder to create than you’d think. My new Wedding Ceremony Master Class for Friend Officiants takes loved ones through my process of creating a heartfelt, memorable and genuine ceremony, and helps friends maintain their own particular flair.
The biggest challenge a friend or family member officiant faces is often hours wasted scouring the internet looking through sample scripts and cobbling together awkward, official-sounding parts because people assume that the friend officiating needs to convey a certain type of religious or spiritual authority. The result is a script that sounds inauthentic, and this is where many friend officiants end up either backing out or moving forward in a way that makes everyone feel the awkwardness.
The wedding ceremony master class gives friend officiants 1) my tried and true Couples’ Questionnaire so they can have lots of appropriate information to draw from when writing the love story message; 2) an inclusive starter ceremony that covers joining of families, remembrance, introducing readings, love story message, I dos, ring exchange and final blessing—all written in the voice of a trusted friend or beloved family member. This allows the friend officiant to spend the bulk of their creative efforts personalizing it, not trying to figure out structure, appropriate tone or flow.
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, as we move through the summer and the rest of the year, there will most likely still be guidelines and restrictions on gathering size. In this new environment, a couple may want to keep their circle tight on their wedding day and prioritize a friend or family member performing the ceremony, instead of an outside professional officiant like me. The new wedding ceremony master class teaches a loved one how to write and prepare a heartfelt, memorable and moving wedding ceremony so couples can still have the wedding of their dreams.
