Wedding Planners were Built For This with Wedding Planner Jane

Bride to Have Been

In today’s world, trying to get married has become... a hot mess. So, to all the COVID brides to have been, grooms and wedding professionals: you’re not alone. Welcome to Bride To Have Been, a StudioPod original podcast hosted by Emily Lewis, with the purpose of building a community by sharing the reality of this new normal in the wedding industry. Let’s keep inspiring each other and celebrate the thing we treasure the most: love.

Wedding planner Jane Alexandra had a wedding booked the very weekend that shelter-in-place orders were put in place in California back in March 2020. That was just the first of over 30 weddings she would end up helping couples postpone, scale down dramatically and even cancel throughout the pandemic. At first, Jane was in fix-it mode just trying to get through every day and every task, but eventually the reality set in that COVID wasn’t going anywhere and her business wasn’t going to be the same anytime soon.

Jump straight into:

(06:24) - Jane on becoming a wedding planner - “I was like, ‘I have no idea what I'm doing. This is scary, but I'm just going to go for it and see what happens.’”

(19:00) - On couples who still wanted to plan large weddings during the pandemic - “The reality is, is it worth the risk? Like what if your wedding gets shut down literally the day before or that morning?”

(20:12) - Planning big weddings during the pandemic - “My husband is a nurse and he works on a COVID unit. And so I personally don't want to put anyone at risk, and also I don't want to put my business at risk and I don't want to be on the news as the wedding planner that hosted a super spreader wedding.”

(26:12) - Giving couples their money back after cancelling - “The deposits that we get, we spend those. We use that money to pay our bills and to pay our teams and to survive.”

(28:41) - On how many weddings there were to move - “Everyone loved the idea of getting married in 2020. So dates that normally wouldn't have been full we're full.”

(30:13) - On couples that had to keep postponing - “They had to postpone again and again and again. And it's just so sad for them. I can't even imagine postponing my wedding three times.”

(31:55) - How Jane has been holding up - “I've probably had at least one mental breakdown a month this entire process. It's exhausting and it's tiring and it's horrible, but every day I just get up and I'm like, ‘Okay, what do I need to tackle now?’”

(41:20) - Riding the COVID rollercoaster - “I've definitely had my moments where I’m like, ‘I'm going to make the best of it and I'm going to cook and I'm in a garden and I'm going to learn to make fun cocktails,’ and that lasts like a week, and then you're back in the tub crying.”

(43:26) - On not having all the answers - “Especially for planners, because this is what we do, we do well under pressure. Our job is to manage crises and to manage anything that could happen day of, which I've seen it all, but the hard part is that I'm used to having the answers on how to fix things.”

Resources

Follow Jane on Instagram

Book a wedding package with Jane and her team at JaneAlexandra Events

See XOKatieRosario’s delicious cakes on Instagram

Book a trip to Flying Flags in Buellton, CA Buellton

Thanks for listening! Follow us on Instagram, don’t forget to use the #COVIDBrideTribe, and feel free to send us your COVID wedding stories. Bride To Have Been is a podcast brought to you by GiftPod and produced at StudioPod. Edits were made at Nodalab and music was produced by GaryOAKland. Don’t forget to subscribe, rate and share with all of your fellow brides.