Found yourself in the position where you’re considering Postponing Melbourne Wedding?
No worries we have some hot tips about how to best to this during the current COVID 19 pandemic. If you’re in the category of couple where you’re just considering the idea of postponing, don’t worry, we’ve got some ideas for you too. Firstly, lets deal with the couples that have had no choice but to postpone, because BAM a lockdown hits. You poor wedded-to-be! All your hard work. All your excitement! All shut down in the blink of an eye because we’ve gone into lockdown…
One Bride’s ingenious system for planning the perfect postponement for her Melbourne wedding! August 2021
Tips For Postponing A Melbourne Wedding!
Our tip in this instance is to be guided by what your venue says. You’ll most likely have paid the biggest deposit to your venue. So best to work with them Re: new date. One trend that is becoming increasingly popular in Melbourne is for couples to reschedule their weddings to another day of the week. That’s right, you may have had a Saturday night locked in. A lockdown hits, next minute your giving thorough consideration to a Thursday or Sunday wedding date. Heck, you might also be thinking about a Wednesday! Why would people do this? So glad you asked. A top reason why you might choose to do this is if your attached, or you really like the vendor team you’ve chose for your wedding. If you spent months carefully going through websites, creating excel spreadsheets on quotes, conducting interviews via Zoom… Then you might really want to keep the supplier team that you’ve already chosen in place. If that’s the case, then your best bet of being able to get all of them, would be to choose a less popular day of the week for the reschedule date. Also, you’ve most likely paid all of these suppliers a deposit, so it would be in your best interests to get them all back for the reschedule date. More about deposits later…
Another reason couples are doing this is that their venue has simply run out of Saturday nights until some point mid 2023!
As you can see by the top image in this blog. This is the fine handy work of one particularly crafty Melbourne Bride. She has proactively sought out the availability of all of her vendors. Then she’s circled the date that all of them have available. Some might consider this to be a time-consuming method, but hey, you’re less likely to lose those precious deposits!
Deposits and Postponed Dates During COVID Pandemic
Not every small business in Melbourne operates in the same way. However, there are some trends emerging in response to the current COVID 19 pandemic, in relation to deposits. In most instances, the initial booking fee or ‘deposit’ you pay to a small business is usually non-refundable. This booking fee is used by many businesses to simply reserve your wedding or event in their calendar and allows them to start making preparations. This can include hiring staff to cover expected events. It can also include buying new equipment. It is also used as a form of security for businesses, taken with the expectation that they will receive your full business on the event date. It’s used to cover the ‘cost of a sale’ if you will. Because as we know, liaising with the public, emails and phone calls related to a booking, all take time. The good news for wedding couples is that in some instances there are some really nice small business owners out there. People who are so selfless, they will give you your initial deposit or booking fee back. Even if they’ve spent time on your booking, or spent time liaising with you, they’ll just repay the fee. Our prediction is that this is not the norm, that is more like an exception in the Melbourne wedding industry. But hey, you might be lucky and get a few vendors like that…! Read more about postponing Melbourne wedding below.
So the majority of businesses wont refund a deposit. There are then some businesses (mainly wedding venues) who won’t refund parts of the balance that you’ve paid on a booking as well. We can really speak to much about this scenario, but we’re sure everyone has seen the odd A Current Affair episode, where couples have paid for their Melbourne wedding venue in full. Only to be refused any form of refund by the venue! This would be a really sad thing to have happen. A take home lesson could be: Don’t pay the balance until the day. Although, a lot of wedding venues, and other businesses for that matter, have rules about when you have to pay portions of the total service fee. For the record, at Ms Lexi & Celestial Band we keep it super simple. We’re a Melbourne Wedding Band and DJ service. It costs about $300 to book your date with us. Then the balance is due either the week before the wedding, OR you can even pay on the night. Read on for more information about postponing Melbourne wedding…
Yes, we’ve considered asking couples to make a 25% payment one month before the wedding. However, in this COVID 19 climate what’s the point? For now (in August 2021) we’re going to keep it super simple with this low deposit and maybe in the future we’ll introduce the 25% thing… So far all of our couples have been so good. We’ve never had to chase anyone for money. Couples usually just transfer part payments before their wedding anyway. Then we just have to keep track of who’s money is for what booking. Which we do easily, don’t worry!
As for our initial $300 booking fee/ deposit. We have a flexible COVID policy, so if restrictions prevent your wedding from going ahead, sure, we’ll postpone for free! That initial deposit is non-refundable for the reasons mentioned above. Plus, in our instance we have live musicians to consider. Our band is one of the few Melbourne Wedding bands that actually pay cancellation fees to musicians. From experience, most bands don’t do this. Many bands just cancel musicians from gigs at the drop of a hat, giving them nothing! That’s a good way to end up with jaded and upset singers and musicians that low key HATE the leader of the band. So yea… if a wedding is cancelled, we try to at least pay them $50 so they’re not left high and dry!
Postponing V’s Sticking It Out
Oooohhh the fun stuff! Here we go. Okay, this next part is for you the humble folk who’ve booked your wedding, and you’re just considering the possibility of postponing. We’re going to raise some arguments in here to help you be able to assess whether it’s easier just to “wait and see” what happen with the pandemic. OR whether all things considered you need to postpone.
JUST POSTPONE… Sounds easy enough right? Wrong. Don’t let that nice little picture at the start of this blog fool you. You can get into a logistical nightmare whilst postponing. The ideal situation for you, the married-couple-to-be, is that you speak with all your suppliers. Find a new date, and everything is tickety-boo. Well first thing you would hope is that all your vendors get back to you in a timely manner. Do you have that one annoying Make Up Artist who always says she’s “dealing with a 5 year old”. Well, she might be the one to really slow down the process…
Postponing and Deposits. Couples-to-be might not want to hear this… but if you choose a new wedding date, and one of your existing suppliers isn’t available for the new date, in most cases they keep the initial deposit. Again, not every business operates in the same way. But this is the general way the Melbourne Wedding Industry is operating at the moment. The argument from the supplier would be… “I would have worked with you on a new date I’m available”.
Postponing Melbourne Wedding
Emotional Pushback from Vendors During Postponing Process
Back to the issues around postponing. Another icky thing to consider is vendors emotional issues and potential pushback around postponing. We’re not so much talking to couples who HAVE to postpone due to a snap lockdown. We’re more talking to couples who are planning a “pre-emptive postponement”. Where you’re postponing 6 weeks out, as you SUSPECT restrictions won’t have lifted by your wedding date. In that instance, you’re more likely to feel the jive of a vendor’s deep seated emotional and psychological issues. If you want to look at it from their point for a hot minute. We’re talking about an industry of people who are have been super pandemic impacted. They may be “just holding on” with their business. They might have severe financial problems at this point in time, and your postponement might be the metaphorical straw that breaks the camel’s back! So, we’re not saying it’s right, but you might expect a little bit of push back if you’re considering a “pre-emptive postponement”. Some of the most unscrupulous vendors might even tell you they’re available for the new date. Then in fact take a bigger job if one comes along. Simply because now they’re shitty and all they care about is that hard cold cash… And revenge.
Postponing Too Soon And Losing Your Wedding Date
Next we have to talk about the risk you take when postponing if restrictions lift, AND YOU COULD HAVE GONE AHEAD. This one is a doozy…. Imagine how annoyed you’ll be if you decide to postpone early. Only to find out your wedding actually could have gone ahead, relatively restriction free! This is made all the worse if you postpone to a new date, and then we have a lockdown then too. Because of the on/ off nature of lockdowns, one can only conclude that one must get one’s wedding in when one can!! You can do whatever you want, but ideally don’t be one of the people in the social media groups bragging about a 6th postponement! If you’re rescheduling that many times, it starts to sound like you’re not even committed to the dates you’re choosing. If you’re starting to reschedule vendors multiple times and you don’t absolutely have to (due to a lockdown) it’s likely those people might start to get a little bit fed up with the process.
Our bottom-line opinion is this: If you have to postpone due to a snap lockdown okay no worries. If you don’t absolutely have to postpone your wedding, don’t. Just wait and see what the pandemic/ restriction status is a few days or a week before the wedding. Some people are going to absolutely hate this idea. What about my anxiety!? They say. Well yea… We get it. It’s an anxious time for a lot of people.
Another caveat to all of this is that we don’t know your exact circumstances. You might have some circumstances which mean you absolutely have to postpone. If this is you, by all means do what is best for yourself and your partner. From the bottom of our hearts, we just hope that everyone gets to have their wedding! We’ve worked long and hard to be where we are with all of our clients. Fingers cross everything can go ahead. OR if it can’t that we can all work together and find a good new date!
Postponing Melbourne Wedding
Book A Wedding Band Melbourne or Yarra Valley
If you’ve enjoyed reading this piece about Postponing Melbourne Wedding, you might be intrigued about what we do at Ms Lexi & Celestial Band. OH! Maybe your old band or DJ can’t do your new date so now you need a new band… COOL we might be able to help. Not going to lie, lots of our dates are now fully booked out. We’ve got nothing available in November 2021 for instance… But if you shoot us an enquiry, we’ll do our best to accommodate your wedding. 🙂 Have a look at our videos here.
Talk to us today about everything wedding band and DJ related! Enquire here or call Lexi on 0467375489!
Written on August 13th 2021.