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.

Miss Rona couldn’t keep wedding photographer Sara Nobel down for long. Even though nearly 20 of the weddings she had booked last year were cancelled or postponed due to the pandemic, Sara got creative and loaded up her schedule with family photo sessions and found new ways to find last minute wedding bookings. Take a listen to her interview with host Emily Lewis as she explains why low expectations are the key to less disappointment and shares other unexpected outlooks on the global crisis we’ve all been bobbing and weaving our way through over the past year. 

Jump straight into:

(02:38) - Sara on how she got into wedding photography - “When I realized that you could get paid to go to people's weddings and hang out and take pictures, that was kind of it for me.”

(06:34) - Sara’s wedding schedule for 2020 - “I was supposed to have 30 weddings. I was like, ‘This is my year, baby! Let's go!’”

(07:04) - How Sara stays positive - “That sadly has been my motto since the third grade, ‘Low expectations, less disappointment.’”

(08:29) - How Sara’s year ended up playing out - “I ended up actually shooting like 16—I'm using air quotes—weddings. Some of them five people, some of them 150 people.”

(16:36) - Marketing during the pandemic - “A lot of people find me on Instagram. It was a combination of word of mouth, very Yelp and a little bit of Instagram.”

(25:37) - Trying to stay safe while working - “I did end up photographing a wedding that I honestly didn't feel super comfortable with.”

(28:35) - Trends Sara sees sticking after the pandemic - “It's not about the wedding, it's about the marriage. Like let's get married, let's focus on the future rather than spend our life savings on a Saturday in June.”

Resources

Follow Sara on Instagram 

See Sara’s work and learn more about her wedding packages 

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.

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.

The house can wait and the business stuff can be figured out later, but the memories? That’s what bride Erin and her fiance Kory decided was most important to them. When Erin sat down with host Emily Lewis to trade wedding stories, she said she had to do a lot of soul searching to figure out what she really wanted, and in the end, it was the big wedding with a large guest list. So the couple decided to push their wedding date back a fourth and final time to August 2022, three and a half years after the couple got engaged and two years after their original wedding date, to a time when they hope gathering and celebrating in large groups will feel safe again. 

Jump straight into:

(07:41) - Erin and Kory’s proposal story - “So we walk over to the Palace of Fine Arts and as we walk in, I'm hearing music, like a string quartet playing, and I start kind of singing along. I'm like, ‘Oh, I know this song.’”

(11:48) - On finding a venue early on - “I actually only really looked at one venue, the Bel-Air Bay Club, in the Palisades, and I just fell in love with it.”

(12:52) - How Erin reacted to shelter-in place orders due to COVID - “I'm like, ‘Oh God, Oh God, this is not good. I need a backup plan.’”

(15:29) - Moving their wedding date back a second time - “I started to go through this process again, reach out to the venue, find out if there are any backup dates, and then at that time they didn't have anything for the rest of 2021.”

(21:49) - Deciding to wait another year to have her dream wedding - “I don't know if it's an unpopular opinion or what, maybe it's not practical and maybe it's just like indulgent. I don't know, but it's what I want.”

(24:10) - On having to find new vendors for their 4th wedding date - “I need to do a new hair and makeup trial anyway, because I'll be a whole different person three years later. Probably need a lot more help by then.”

(25:18) - Being resilient after moving her wedding four times - “I really hardly cried about it. I was just very matter of fact, like, this is what it is. This is what we do.”

(32:22) - Trying to brighten other COVID couple’s day - “So what I'm doing in my area is offering any COVID brides and grooms discounts on Invisalign, whitening, braces, whatever they want to get them ready for the wedding.”

Resources

Follow Erin on Instagram 

Book dental treatments with Walker Orthodontics 

Book the Bel-Air Bay Club in Pacific Palisades

Listen to Emily’s interview with Wedding Planner Jane Gerwin

Book a wedding package at

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.

From social worker to full time floral designer, Marie Crick was set to have a good year in 2020. But by the time the year was over she had lost half of her weddings. Still, when Bride to Have Been host Emily Lewis sat down with Marie to talk about her experiences navigating the pandemic, her concerns seemed to lie more with her brides. “We all got our fairytale weddings, and they just got screwed,” Crick told Lewis. She also noted that her clients really took her situation into account over the last year, going out of their way to support her and other small businesses. Meanwhile she found ways to pivot her business, focusing on a video series for couples looking to make their own flower arrangements and shifting her energy into individual flower deliveries. Still, as Marie says, it’s been a stay afloat kind of year.

Jump straight into:

(02:49) - On how Marie got into floral design - “I was working as a social worker with foster kids, and as you can imagine, it was just a little bit of a stressful job. And so I used flowers at the time as a hobby, and they were kind of a healing modality for me.”

(04:48) - Trying to become a full time florist  - “I was just finding flower shops and trying to apply, and they weren't impressed with my portfolio.”

(12:40) - The trouble with Pinterest boards - “Sometimes I get Pinterest boards from brides and I'm like, that's not a real flower and that's not a real flower and that's been painted and that has a humongous filter on it from the photographer. That's not what it'll actually look like.”

(17:17) - Marie’s initial response to shelter in place orders - “I had a bride call me in probably April about her September wedding, and I just thought she was goofy.”

(24:37) - Feeling empathy for COVID Brides - “I remember my wedding a few years ago and it was so much work just for one wedding that actually did happen the way that I thought it was going to.”

(28:55) - A little silver lining - “Some couples are delighted that COVID happened because it's their excuse not to invite aunt Betsy who drives them up the wall.”

Resources

Follow Laurel and Vine on Instagram 

Learn more about Marie’s Wedding Flower Academy

Follow wedding photographer Regina K. Popova on Instagram

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...

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.

In this week’s episode of Bride To Have Been, bride Llanée tells us all about how she had just dropped off her wedding dress for alterations when shelter-in-place orders started dropping. Llanée and her fiance Andrew were set to get married in May 2020 in Jamaica, but the global pandemic forced them to make a new plan. Now the couple is looking forward to tying the knot this summer, and only with a slightly scaled down version of their original tropical vision. 

Jump straight into:

(07:29) - Llanée and Andrew’s proposal story - “He gets down on his knee and then presents the ring and proposes, and of course everyone is there crying and screaming and recording my reactions.”

(11:40) - On Llanée’s wedding vision - “If you had asked when I was a kid what my dream would have been, it would have been, ‘Tropical wedding, not here.’”

(13:00) - Trying to process all of the new regulations - “How do you even redesign a wedding based on the fact that you can't have eight people at a table?”

(14:09) - On how close Llanée’s wedding was to the onset of the global pandemic - “When the announcement happened, I had just dropped my dress off to be altered.”

(23:07) - Getting the dress to fit right after postponing - “My dressmaker, she was just like, ‘Oh, so if you feel like you want to lose a little bit more... don’t.’”

(25:25) - Family traditions the couple is looking forward to - “Obviously we can't bring a cake, especially during COVID to Jamaica.”

Resources

Follow Llanée on Instagram 

See Llanée and her fiance Andrew’s

photoshoot in Oregon Bride

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.

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.

Christen Monise was tasked with helping hundreds of couples who had booked their big wedding days at Spanish Hills Country Club in Camarillo, California to scale down or postpone their weddings. “The number one question I get is usually related to if they can or can't have their wedding or what that's going to look like, and I wish I could give people the answer. I wish I had a crystal ball,” Monise told Bride To Have Been host Emily Lewis on the podcast. “I’m just a catering girl at a country club.” Monise and her now husband also had to navigate their own nuptials during COVID and managed to stay positive throughout. While it was difficult not to sweat the small stuff, Monise said the micro wedding they opted for exceeded their expectations and they’re looking forward to celebrating their one year anniversary with a slightly expanded guest list. 

Jump straight into:

(04:40) - How Christen’s husband proposed at Disneyland - “He proposed and right after I said yes and we were hugging or kissing, I hear this woman screaming from far away and like clapping and cheering. And I look around and I'm just like, ‘Oh look, we have fans.’ You know, people like saw us. And then I realized who was screaming and it was my mom.”

(08:56) - Planning their wedding during COVID - “Three days after I sent out my wedding invitations is when I found out the Santa Barbara courthouse stopped doing ceremonies.”

(12:23) - The Wedding Plan B - “I thought it'd be kind of funny if we read our vows again and just kind of did like a checkup to see how we built out the first year of all these like lofty promises we've made.”

(14:08) - Christen reflecting on the most difficult part of getting married during the pandemic - “Not sweating the small stuff was probably the hardest part because you get very emotionally attached to like the flowers that you pick out and the vision that's in your head.”

(15:33) - Remaining a team during wedding planning - “This was definitely a first good test for our communication and navigating uncertainty and just collaborating.”

(18:20) - On 2020 being set to be a huge year for events - “People just have this superstition almost as far as repeating numbers or even numbers and stuff like that. So it was definitely supposed to be a record year for all kinds of functions.”

(33:04) - The biggest questions Christen deals with as a coordinator at a wedding venue - “The number one question I get is, ‘Can I have my wedding?’”

(33:55) - On trying to be sensitive to what people are going through - “I try not to do a lot of these tough questions on email because I want them to hear my sincerity and I want to try and convey my positivity.”

(34:58) - The direction Christen sees the wedding industry heading in - “Up until the pandemic hit a lot of people would invite like 100 to 200 people, and you think about your circle and who's important to you, and then you get carried away with their plus ones and then you invite all your coworkers, and the next thing you know it kind of turns into this runaway train.”

Resources

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.

What’s one more year? That’s a question it took bride Jenna a minute to get comfortable with considering she and her fiance had already been together for eight years when they finally got engaged. But after thinking it over and knowing it was important to wait for a time when she and her fiance Zach could celebrate with their large families over an entire weekend at a “rustic nautical” destination wedding in Saint Michaels, Maryland, Jenna made the call last April to move their August 2020 wedding back an entire year so they could stick to their grand plans. A year later, they’re still not sure what their new wedding date will look like or if guests will even be allowed to dance. The only  thing they know for sure is that there will be all the crab and lobster a person could eat. 

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.

Jump straight into:

(07:57) - Jenna on when she knew Zach was the one - “I honestly knew right away. I know that's so cheesy but this felt so different from any other relationship I've ever been in, and I was like, ‘What's happening right now? What is this feeling?’”

(09:02) - On Zach proposing after eight years of dating - “It became kind of like a joke of like, ‘Zach, when are you going to propose?’”

(11:38) - The proposal - “When I came home, I walked into a candlelit room with a PowerPoint of all the eight years of photos of us, and then at the very end, it said, ‘Will you marry me?’”

(22:05) - On postponing their wedding early on - “I was like, ‘I am not losing all of these vendors and it's not getting better.’ And so I switched it and my sister thought it was so early on, ‘You're being ridiculous.’ But I was right.”

(25:34) - Finding the perfect wedding dress - “I'm definitely not one of those ‘say yes to the dress’ girls.”

(27:31) - The hardest part of planning a wedding during the pandemic - “The lack of being excited about it is stressful to me. I wish that I could be excited about it, and I guess as it gets closer I will be. But I am just so emotionally drained about it.”

(28:05) - All of the things that are still unknown - “I can't envision the day without it being like, ‘Are people coming? Are there masks? Is it going to get canceled? Is it going to be small? Is there going to be dancing?’”

(32:55) - Not feeling like she can talk about moving her...

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.

Like many brides, Rachel thought she wanted a big wedding with all the works. She and her fiance Scott even booked a wedding venue that could accommodate 250 guests just before COVID hit in early 2020. But in the thick of the global pandemic with nine months left before their wedding date, the couple decided to switch up their grand plans for a micro wedding with just six of their family members and have opted to plan for a bigger celebration sometime in the future. Even then, the couple is planning to scale back their plans to around just 80 guests once the pandemic has finally blown over. As Rachel points out to host Emily Lewis, did she really need her mother’s tennis friends at her wedding? No. 

Jump straight into:

(05:48) - On Rachel expecting a proposal from Scott - “I put a couple of puzzle pieces together and figured out that today was the day.”

(08:58) - Rachel realizing she didn’t need a big wedding after COVID - “I thought I wanted a big grand wedding so we booked a 250-person wedding in this expensive catering hall, but now that it's turned into what it is, I'm actually much happier.”

(10:08) - Scaling down the wedding - “Obviously I want my family and my good friends there, but do I need my mom's tennis friends? No.”

(19:25) - Rachel’s outlook on life in quarantine - “Everybody got screwed over in one way or another. This is just our way.”

(20:59) - The chaos of planning a wedding during COVID - “The plan changed every day. We're done changing it. This is what we're doing.”

(24:54) - Rachel’s takeaway from the past year - “I think everybody should take time when they first get engaged to sit down and think about it for real before making any moves.”

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.

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.

It has been a tough year for wedding photography team Geoff and Lyndsi, but they won’t tell you that. Aside from raising a growing toddler with one more kiddo on the way and losing months of income due to COVID, this husband and wife duo prefer to focus on the silver linings and helping their clients navigate the pandemic as they’ve had to reschedule, scale back and even cancel their weddings. And while Lyndsi and Geoff are looking forward to a time when things get back to normal, they say they hope everyone’s new priorities stick and that intimacy and authenticity become staples in the wedding industry. 

Jump straight into:

(02:42) - How Lyndsi and Geoff met - “The romantic version is we were both ocean lifeguards, or we were at the time, so the romantic version is that we met on the beach. Very Baywatch.”

(03:49) - About their first date and early dating days - “Our first date was actually scuba diving. Yeah, she took me down pretty deep.”

(07:45) - On Geoff starting to shoot weddings after finishing college - “It's so funny to me to think about like a young 20 year old male shooting weddings. Yeah. I mean, I really didn't have any idea what I was doing.”

(20:15) - What it was like for the couple when COVID hit - “Our first postponement was April 10th, and it's crazy to think back on that time, because it was just, it was so unknown and so scary and people just, no one had any idea what the heck was going on. And it was just bad news after bad news, after like tough conversation after tough conversation. It was just, it was wild. It was a wild time.”

(33:01) - How it felt helping their clients - “You're just seeing all these weddings postpone. I have to admit it kind of takes the wind out of your sails.”

(36:50) - Focusing on the positives - “A big silver lining of this year: It has been this forced balance. And I think that that is such a transition, going from being like doing life at warp speed.”

(40:42) - How Geoff and Lyndsi want to see the wedding industry change in the future - “The intimacy of not having to worry about all these extra things and all these extra people, you know, there's just something really special about that. I've never heard anyone say they wish they had a bigger wedding.”

Resources

Book with Geoff & Lyndsi Photography

Follow Geoff & Lyndsi Photography on Instagram 

Learn more about Mean Girls Day

See Unique Floral Designs for yourselves!

Thanks for listening! Follow us on

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.

Brittany and her fiancé Sam knew they wanted to have a flashy destination wedding in Jamaica where her dad grew up and she still has lots of family. So when the couple got engaged in 2019, they decided to set their date for March 2021 giving their friends and family extra notice and ample time to save for their snazzy Caribbean nuptials. And while the couple still plans to keep their original date, it's anyone’s guess how the day will actually go as travel bans and local regulations have kept this couple on their toes and wondering how many of their guests will actually be able to attend safely and comfortably.

Jump straight into:

(02:53) - How Brittany and Sam met - “We just hit it off. Next thing you know, we had another date the following week that actually ended up being about five dates in one, and we really just kept seeing each other until I moved back to Boston.”

(03:57) - Getting engaged after dating long distance - “Sam and I like to joke that long distance probably put like an extra, I don't know, five, ten years on our relationship. People say, ‘Wow, you guys got engaged super fast.’ And we're like, ‘Yeah. Try doing long distance, California, Boston.’”

(05:42) - How Sam proposed - “We're sitting on the beach and Sam is saying the most beautiful things, and next thing I know, he's like, ‘Can you stand up?’ And he gets down on one knee and I'm just like, ‘What's happening? What are you doing?’ That's like, literally what I said is, ‘What are you doing?’ And he proposed.”

(19:51) - Who is planning to attend their destination wedding in March 2021 - “My parents are planning to go regardless, but that also adds another layer because I feel a sense of guilt in a way.”

(21:51) - How Brittany is trying to manage the bad days - “I try and center myself and bring myself back to the fact that regardless, Sam and I will have an incredible marriage and a wedding that will be special. And this is just one point in time for the rest of our lives.”

(22:53) - On feeling sad about her scaled-down wedding - “I feel silly because I have friends who have had to postpone their weddings twice. Right? And we haven't gotten to that point. So I'm also kind of like, ‘Why am I saying why me?’”

Resources

Follow Brittany on Instagram

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

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.

Alaina and her fiance Shane weren’t too worried when shelter-in-place orders started coming down last Spring. Afterall their wedding date was already set for April 2021 so it was hard to imagine there would still be issues by then. “Even up until November and December, we kept telling ourselves, ‘Next year we'll worry about it, and next year we'll worry about it.’ And now it's next year,” the bride-to-be told host Emily Lewis during her interview for the podcast. Ultimately the couple would decide to postpone their big dream wedding for almost another year making their already-long engagement stretch to four years in total. 

Jump straight into:

(04:20) - Alaina on when she knew Shane was the one - “About two years into dating, I started badgering him with the ‘marry me’ every other day and then every day.”

(06:16) - The proposal - “I knew he was nervous and I didn't know why. And I remember at one point during dinner, I picked up his hand. I'm like, ‘Why are you so sweaty? What are you nervous about? Are you okay?’”

(08:24) - Alaina on dreaming of a big wedding - “The romance of weddings and brides was something I was drawn to while I was in school and working in the fashion industry.”

(10:42) - The couple’s initial reaction to the pandemic - “Even up until November and December, we kept telling ourselves, ‘Next year we'll worry about it, and next year we'll worry about it.’ And now it's next year.”

(14:39) - Why they decided to push their date back another year - “We figured what's the rush. People already waited two and a half years. We can wait another year.”

(15:39) - On finding a new date - “If we wanted to postpone for 2021, they only had one date in June and one date in July available that were Saturdays.”

(17:32) - Restrictions at their venue during the pandemic - “Just imagining the 50 people in this room that can hold 350 people, it just seems silly.”

(22:08) - Alaina on saving mementos from the entire process - “I've been keeping everything, our engagement party invitations and thank you notes, just as a scrapbook thing. I think it's another way that we can document this crazy experience.”

(28:26) - How Alaina and Shane have tried to grow - “The pandemic probably taught all of us being stuck at home, away from family and watching people we know and love get sick and just not knowing what's going to happen, that we have to cherish the day and be happy with what we have.”

Resources

Follow Alaina on Twitter 

Follow Alaina on Instagram

Follow The Knot on Instagram

The Knot's Official Guidebook for COVID-19 Wedding Help

The Knot’s support hotline: (833)...