Covid-19 and the pandemic has managed to infiltrate so many areas of our lives and materially impact our ability to do almost anything. One such area that has been negatively impacted to a huge degree is travelling abroad for a wedding. The various, and ever-changing, restrictions have made it difficult to plan ahead with any certainty, making jetting off somewhere to get hitched far harder than in pre pandemic times.
However, it is not impossible. With the introduction of vaccine passports on the NHS app and increased availability of travel testing kits from government-approved companies like MedicSpot, planning a wedding abroad is not as tough as you might think. These are our top tips when planning a wedding abroad in Covid times.
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Know the rules
While they may be ever changing, knowing what the current rules are surrounding travel is one of the best things you can do when planning a wedding abroad at the moment. Additionally, if you can try to keep abreast of what the government’s proposed intentions are with respect to travel advice, that will be very useful when making plans for your wedding overseas.
Currently, there are not a large number of countries on the government’s green list, which means that there are only a handful of places that people are allowed to travel to just for a holiday — and also with no need to quarantine upon return. However, the government has stated that it will review that list ever three weeks. The hope is that counties will be added to the green list over time, rather than be taken off it.
Build in flexibility
Make use of the fact that many airlines and holiday operators are having to sell their tickets and holidays with a large amount of flexibility built into them. Whereas once, before Covid, you would have had to pay extra to be able to amend or cancel a booking, now you will often find that doing so is free. Travel industry businesses are having to do so to entice people into buying plane tickets and booking hotels. Without that inbuilt flexibility, many people simply will not be tempted to risk buying anything at all. Make the most of this by ensuring that anything you do book offers free changes and amendments for both you and your guests.
Get tested
Getting tested is one of the key ways you can help ensure that your wedding abroad will go ahead. Another is knowing the rules and sticking to them. Many countries require foreigners to have a negative PCR test within three days of arrival, and the UK also has rules for testing upon return. But getting tested is more than just sticking to the rules. It also helps break chains of transmission by picking up positive cases and therefore alerting asymptomatic carriers of the infection that they need to isolate.
Manage your expectations
Perhaps one thing that we have all learnt in the last year is that no matter how good the infection data looks, it can take a turn for the worse pretty quickly. Bearing that in mind, try to manage your expectations to stop yourself getting too disappointed should your plans be scuppered by sudden restrictions being announced. Remember, there is the very real possibility that all international travel will be banned again — with weddings abroad not recognised as a legitimate reason to travel.
Managing your expectations, and stress at the uncertainty, is much more easily done if you ensure that you make use of flexible booking options. Additionally, try to take out an insurance policy that covers you for as much as possible in terms of the impact of Covid — on top of other risks that wedding insurance can help protect you from financially.
Choose your destination carefully
Finally, try to be sensible about where you plan to get married. If you have your heart set on getting married in a country currently on the red list, you may have to either adjust the destination, or your timeline. If, however, you can see from the statistics that your chosen country is successfully keeping numbers down through a good vaccination and testing program, you could see that country soon added to the green list — if it is not there already. And if you ever dream for a Las Vegas wedding destination, no need to worry as you can book at eloping Las Vegas for hassle free wedding destination packages. And you will definitely have the most memorable wedding while still in a pandemic. Doing so should hopefully save you a lot of heartache and improve your chances of you plans going ahead as you want them to.
Getting married abroad during Covid
While the above suggestions do not give you 100% certainty that your dream wedding can go ahead abroad, implementing these tips should materially improve your chances of doing so. Plus, they will also help mitigate against any of the fallout should a third wave sadly occur.