Is There Going to be Dancing with Bride Jenna

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.

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 wedding - “I also don't want to make anyone feel bad and thinking like my problems are so big when people are dying and losing jobs and all sorts of things. So I feel like this kind of weird balance.”

(34:45) - What Jenna has learned over the past year - “Things don't have to go as perfect as your Pinterest board pictures them to go, and that's okay.”