6 Important Tips To Prepare For Your Virtual Wedding

It is a wow to see virtual weddings, a truly unique style of sharing a love story, in the doldrums of the COVID-19 pandemic. Social Networking Sites are filled to the brim with the hashtags of ‘Quarantine weddings’ being the ‘new normal’.

Back in January, who would have thought that weddings from home would be the new vogue, and the last wedding accessory that would be needed, would be a matching face mask with the wedding dress. 

Under such circumstances, most couples are reducing their weddings in terms of guests, decorations, food, etc. Weddings are of immense importance and most famously conceived as public entertainment consisting of a procession of people in elaborate, colorful costumes and rich delicacies all reaching the humble palates of the guests.

The wedding week is an exhilarating as well as an exhausting event in everyone’s life. Beneath all the glint and gleam, are fathers, mothers, relatives, and staff running under the influence of hysteria.

From bargaining with the wedding planners to finalizing the menu to making arrangements for guests to stay at the hotel, the family members go through a grilling and prolonged experience when there is a wedding in the house. Everything has to be splendid; everything has to be grand. But this year people paused to think. Weddings might be an event for families and friends, but more than that, it’s about two people becoming one. 

If you are not sure whether a virtual ceremony is for you and are worried they may lack intimacy, meaning, or emotion or that they may be in some way ‘lesser’ substitute for the ‘real’ thing, it’s a valid concern but the concept of virtual weddings suggest that they’re different and new but no less important. In many ways there is a paradox that remote weddings can bring people closer, perhaps connect us even more.

Technology allows couples and their guests to express themselves more freely, more naturalistically than traditional formats may follow. If you’re considering postponing your wedding or vow renewal, I’d love you to go through this article. It will surely change your mind and will help you to plan your wedding in the best way.

Here are our Top Virtual Ceremony Tips that are sure to help you plan an unforgettable Virtual Wedding Experience:

1. Get a good internet connection

A good video call connection is integral to having an online wedding. When you can’t really connect with each other, it feels awkward, and everyone just wants it to end.

A laggy call sort of feels annoying and you wouldn’t want that to happen on your special day now, would you? So, if your internet connection struggles with maintaining a smooth call, it might be time to consider upgrading your internet. 

So make sure you clear other devices from your Wi-fi for the duration of the ceremony to stop it from potentially overloading and buffering. 

2. Decide on a platform you want to conduct your wedding

The bigger the meeting, the more data it uses. You need to decide what meeting platform your guests will use to watch you and your soon-to-be spouse tie the knot. Think of your platform as your wedding venue.

As a venue, there will likely be costs associated with the number of guests you want to have in attendance. There are a lot of options out there to choose from, so we’ve compiled a list of the most popular and highlighted their features.                                                                     

Zoom - It allows the guests to interact with the host and with each other, enabling your wedding to have a social element without people physically being present. It also offers virtual backgrounds for couples who want to get married in a remote location. So, you can absolutely go crazy with them and have backgrounds ranging from Udaipur’s palaces to Lake Como in Italy, your choice.

Google Meet - Another great option for hosting a virtual wedding is GoogleMeet. Similar to other platforms, it also allows users to have a live video feed and host a large number of guests. It boasts excellent security features, allowing hosts to limit who can join. Guests are able to talk and interact with the host and with each other as well. Grid view, Push to Talk, Virtual Backgrounds are some links to chrome extensions that could make the experience more interactive and fun for you guys.

Facebook - All of your guests have a Facebook account? Well, this is potentially one of the best apps for virtual weddings amid the COVID-19 crisis. Why? Because you can invite an unlimited number of guests and stream your wedding for 8 hours non-stop. No, you don’t have to broadcast your event to the entire list of friends. Instead, you can just create a private group and go live! 

3. Send out an official e-vite to all the guests

While you can host a huge online wedding bash via the meeting apps, you should still invite only the people who will be on your wedding guest list. And even though it is a more casual event, you still need to send out invitations.

Yes, they can be in electronic form, and yes, the wording can be a little more relaxed. And at the end, you can include the meeting link and meeting ID, which ensures that only guests with that information would be able to join. E-vite is a site you can refer to for a wide variety of e-invitations.

4. Make the perfect playlist

You can appoint a Dj or a band and make it look like a typical wedding day being watched on television. Use Spotify. You can think of additional forms of entertainment to add to the wedding, such as slideshows, personalized elements, etc. You can make everyone dance too, virtually.

5. Make someone else the in-charge

 Throwing a virtual wedding is definitely less elaborate but it still takes a lot of managerial skills to pull off. So don’t take everything on yourself and designate someone as your virtual wedding coordinator or a family member who’s good at managing people and is tech-savvy.

The person should be able to set up a tripod/projector, record the whole thing and taking screenshots, overseeing the waiting room, and unmuting certain people during the ceremony. Here's a video that might help you to get a clearer idea of what tech support you would require:

6. Make the best of it

As we said, this is new to everyone and it might not be ideal. Although planning from the couch in PJs doesn’t sound so bad to us, but there is light at the end of the tunnel. We’ll all get there together so (try to!) keep a positive attitude and get married to your ‘the one’.

The fact that all these pieces in the jigsaw fit together in such times preaches to value people who love us more than the materialistic joys. This change in the wedding culture proves to be a great time to think and cherish the simplicity of life or just chill like the times when there were no wedding planners or designers. Everything in-house! People have come to realize that simplicity is very underrated in today’s world and a lot of things have been hyped by us.  

Another astonishing fact is that people are trying to adjust to the resources easily available to them which were a huge ruckus earlier. Due to the lockdown, traveling is prohibited and hence, the not-so-essential items are not accessible.

Just love and delight all around with their mother’s wedding dress, grandmother’s jewelry, brother’s photography and sister’s makeup, and a potluck lunch.

Everyone is just themselves and every moment is made memorable. This is reminding people of the stories they heard from their parents about how weddings used to happen in earlier times. Simple, intimate, and Beautiful.

All in all, it is going to be amazing to see the families getting together and celebrating one of the most important days of their loved ones. It is also a reminder that difficult times will come and go but it can’t stop us to celebrate life. 

It’s time to revolutionize society, one wedding at a time, and say goodbye to the culture of The Big Fat Wedding for the time being. Guess all is not lost in 2020!