Corona Virus Wedding Tips - How To Stay Safe If Your UK Wedding Can Go Ahead This Year & Achieving The Perfect Group Shots

There’s no doubting that these are some seriously unprecedented times, if someone had told me four months ago I’d have to postpone half of my weddings, I’d have thought that they’d gone mad! I truly feel terrible for all the couples who’ve waited so long for their wedding day to come, only to have it postponed for yet another year because of Corona Virus.

If you’re one of the lucky ones with a wedding in the second half of 2020 or have managed to reschedule everything for the same year, congratulations! There’s a good chance your day will still be able to go ahead, although definitely with some precautions. Let’s talk about some of the ways you can still have an amazing day while keeping all of your loved ones safe and sound.

Before I get into it, I just want to preface this with a statement. I’m definitely not a doctor of any kind so take these tips as ways to help prevent spread as opposed to outright negating it. If you feel any anxiety or worry that Corona Virus will affect your day this year or the health of you or anyone you know, you should probably consider postponing. It’s not the sentence you want to read months before your wedding, but I just want to make sure that everyone has their best day ever.

Wedding Ring Details at Ocean Gower View, South Wales

Creating A Safe Environment On Your Wedding Day:

As you’ve probably guessed, there’s a good chance that social distancing practices will be in place until the end of the year throughout the UK. While this complicates things slightly, it’s far from impossible to still have an amazing wedding day with your family and friends.

If you’re planning a huge wedding, the first and most important thing you can do is reduce the guest count. I’m sure that you’ve both poured many hours of work into creating the perfectly crafted guest list of loved ones and close friends, however, this is the absolute best way to keep people safe. Depending on the size of your venue, you’ll have to use your best judgement on how many people can safely fit inside with room to spare. As a rule of thumb, it’s probably best kept under one hundred. It’s also a great excuse to un-invite anyone you’re not a fan of!

The second is to ask anyone who has had corona virus-related symptoms in the last two weeks to stay home as It’s really not worth running the risk of them possibly infecting others. While it’s not a fool proof plan, it should definitely help keep the day safe. It might also be a great idea to ask any wedding staff to wear masks throughout the entire day, especially if they’re the ones handling food and drinks. Staff and vendors are almost never in the photos or videos so looking back at them won’t have you feeling like you had your wedding during some kind of apocalypse.

Practicing Social Distancing:

Couples portrait session on their wedding day at Highbury Hall, Birmingham

Usually, a wedding day is filled with slightly drunk hugs and lots of cheek kissing. Depending on the social distancing guidelines at the time, this job is probably best kept only for the closest friends and family. Other guests will still want to chat and congratulate you, but from arm’s length is the best practice to keep you and them safe. The best way to achieve this would be to have the registrar/vicar announce it during the ceremony as opposed to reminding anyone who comes near you.

Another great idea would be to spread every table out as much as possible with a bigger gap between seated guests. If your venue has the capacity with your reduced guest count, consider adding extra tables to reduce the numbers from eight heads at a table to four. An option to prevent some guests feeling left out on the day would be to allocate some extra time for additional speeches, giving them an extra voice when they can’t get close enough.

It would also be a good idea to spread out the seating of the ceremony to give guests a bit more room to breath. The officiator will probably also suggest keeping a safe distance away from you to keep you both safe and sound. Something I’d definitely suggest is limiting the capacity of the dance floor to a reasonable amount as it’s usually packed from elbow to elbow. If possible, take a look around your venue before the day to size up certain areas and create some homemade signs asking guests to stick to recommended capacities in certain areas.

Wedding Group Shots During The COVID-19 Outbreak:

While at first, this might not seem possible, I’ve come up with an idea that could possibly allow you to get all the shots on your list without putting anyone at risk. It’ll be challenging but definitely worth it.

Credit: Ólafur Steinar Gestsson / Ritzau Scanpix

Taking a look at the photo of two friends sitting on the grass (taken by Ólafur Steinar Gestsson) you’ll see that in the first image it appears that the two friends are both sat closely together while in the second it’s revealed that they’re actually staying well apart. This is caused by the effect of focal length compression.

Focal length compression occurs when a lens is zoomed in tight, making objects that were once in the background appear as being much closer than they actually are, this is enhanced when there’s a subject in the foreground. This interesting technique was used during the filming of Lord of the Rings to exaggerate the height of the hobbits without using CGI. If you’re struggling to understand how that’s possible, take a look at this quick video which explains the method.

Using this special technique, we can now safely pose group shots while keeping a distance of depth between guests. It might look slightly silly on the day but the photos should be much better than the alternative of having everyone standing six feet apart! If you’ve booked with me and would like to use this method on the day, just send me an email and we’ll go through it more in detail. If you have another photographer capturing your day or know someone who could benefit, feel free to send them this article to use as an example of how to socially distance group shots.

Social Distancing Wedding Group shot Method by Bright Sight Photography

Ask your photographer to use a long, zoom lens and switch to a higher aperture to compensate the distance of depth, preventing guests looking out of focus. Position guests one by one, setting up the front row with distance between each person and then bring in the back row to fill in the gaps. If achieved correctly, you should be able to still have group shots with your closest friends and family while keeping them safe (with a little extra effort of course). It might not be absolutely perfect in practice, but it’s pretty close.

Final Thoughts:

Now that we’ve talked about the ways you can keep you and your guests safe through the day, it’s time to start planning. With some luck, these methods won’t be needed at all but if they are, they should work to protect everyone and still allow you to enjoy the amazing day. If you do end up married at the end of this year, you’ll have the badge of honor that you can bring out any time a bride says “wedding planning is hard”, allowing you to say “I planned mine through a global pandemic!” in response.

It’s also important that high-risk guests (elderly and people with illnesses) have extra care for them on the day, if that means a seat at a table further away or even attending the ceremony through Facetime and showing their face in the evening then those are definitely routes that should be taken. If the date draws closer with government restrictions on events still in place, get in touch and we’ll work together on finding the best date for you to reschedule your wedding day (totally free of course).

I really hope everyone is keeping safe and well, mentally and physically. While these times are tough, we will all look back on this as a distant memory soon. I care about every single one of my couples so keeping you safe is my absolute priority. If you’d like to request that we wear masks and gloves on the day, that definitely won’t be a problem. We’d also advise that any wedding staff also wear masks and gloves in order to protect everyone as much as possible.

If you have any questions about this article or your day, get in touch via email using this link or send me a message over on the Facebook page!

Stay safe,

Cameron Jones

Photographer & Videographer at Bright Sight Photography