How to Cut Down Your Guest List and other COVID Wedding Questions with Kim Forrest, from The Knot Worldwide

Bride to Have Been

Show Summary

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 role of a wedding planner is more important than ever right now, they should be like your second mother, says Senior Editor Kim Forrest at The Knot Worldwide. She should know. She has been writing about weddings for nearly 15 years and has been helping The Knot produce stories and content to help couples navigate COVID wedding planning. From setting up a support hotline that has received over 3,000 calls to date to coining terms for all of the new kinds of weddings we’re seeing (minimonies, sequel weddings and anniversary receptions), and even culling data (66% of couples have pushed their weddings to 2021 and 7% have pushed to 2022) Kim and her team have been working nonstop to make their couples feel special and supported throughout one of the biggest milestones in their lives.

Jump straight into:

(02:18) - How Kim Forrest got into writing about weddings - “The wedding industry, it's been really exciting and again, [I] just love writing about love.”

(06:32) - How The Knot is working behind the scenes to support couples - “It was just a matter of talking to to vendors who were really on the ground, we talked to health experts, we really did the legwork to make sure that we were giving our couples the most up-to-date and the most helpful information out there.”

(11:10) - Why they started the hotline - “It's been really a safe space for couples to ask for advice from experts and to vent and to just kind of hear a friendly voice.”

(17:13) - When couples were rescheduling for - “66% pushed to 2021, 7% pushed to 2022, and then there are people who are not sure, and people who rescheduled till later in 2020.”

(23:15) - Kim on COVID wedding trends - “There are a lot of trends that we're seeing. For 2021 wedding trends, the sort of theme I came up with was smaller but bigger. So the guest list is smaller, but that means that a lot of the other elements of a wedding are bigger.”

(27:44) - On couples feeling guilty about wedding planning during the pandemic - “Because weddings are such a happy thing, and with so much happening in the world, one can feel guilty for planning a wedding during this time. That could seem frivolous. So we really tried to help couples see that it's not something to feel guilty for.”

(29:13) - The importance of celebrating anyway - “Having these moments of joy, they mean a lot to people, they really do. And I think that there's a lot of good in that. So I understand of course why people feel that guilt and feel that wide range of emotions, but I do think that people also need to be able to feel those moments of joy.”

Resources

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

The Knot’s support hotline: [phone]

Follow The Knot 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 GaryOAKland. Don’t forget to subscribe, rate and share with all of your fellow brides.