NSW couples forced to postpone their weddings due to Covid

Doc Aramoana and Amanda Godley have postponed their wedding five times due to the Covid pandemic and like many other couples, they are losing hope — as well as time and money — as they wait for their big day.

Doc Aramoana and Amanda Godley have had to postpone their wedding five times.

And with every week we move deeper into lockdown, the number of couples joining the Western Sydney duo in wedding limbo climbs.

The wedding industry was still catching up on delays caused by the 2020 lockdowns when Greater Sydney was plunged back into lockdown, meaning no weddings at all. Now large parts of the state have joined them.

Seven weeks in and more and more fed-up couples are being forced to put their lives on hold as their big day gets further and further out of reach.

Doc Aramoana and Amanda Godley have put off their wedding five times due to Covid restrictions.

Between April and June of last year, only 3518 weddings were held in NSW — a drop of almost 60 per cent on the 2015 figure of 8782. In the six months from January to June of 2020, a total of 37,813 marriages occurred across the country, representing a 31.9 drop for the same six-month period in the past five years.

It’s a trend sure to continue.

The flow-on effect is delaying some couples such as Byron Bay beauty therapist Stacy Fiorenza and fiance Brodie Gardner from starting a family.

After changing wedding dates three times in 12 months, they have decided to elope in September, determined not to let any more setbacks delay the next part of their lives.

“We want to move on with our lives, find a house and consider starting a family, without a postponed wedding and Covid holding us back,” Fiorenza, 31, told Saturday Extra.

“When all is said and done, we will still get married on our wedding date, and that is what truly matters to us.”

Fiorenza and Gardner, a plumber, have been together for 13 years and originally planned on getting married in May on the Sunshine Coast, where they hoped to move after Fiorenza lost her job last year due to Covid.

“We were attending wedding expos in Brisbane and inspecting venues up at Sunshine from January to March last year, when Covid hit harder so more restrictions and border closures in place made it impossible for us to relocate and plan a wedding there,” she says.

Byron Bay couple Stacy Fiorenza and Brodie Gardner have planned three weddings in 12 months.

“We decided to stay in Byron until it settled, and booked our current venue on the Tweed Coast in November 2020, for a September 2021 wedding thinking, we would surely be fine by then.

“We’re feeling anxious and stressed – it’s a waiting game at this stage and completely out of our control which makes it extremely difficult to stay motivated and continue planning.

“We are trying hard to hold on to hope, but will definitely be sad if we can’t have our big day with all our loved ones, something we and our families and friends have waited a long time for, just because of Covid.”

The couple has discussed postponing again, but there was no guarantee that the new date could go ahead and the exercise has already left them thousands of dollars out of pocket, at a time when the money is needed most.

“So we decided if we can’t go ahead with our full-scale wedding, our next best option is to elope with those who are able to get here, and have a reception party at a later date next year,” Fiorenza says.

“If we have to elope, it will feel like we’ve literally wasted a year of our lives planning a wedding that couldn’t happen.”

Doc Aramoana and Amanda Godley are hoping for fifth time’s a charm when it comes to their wedding day. They were meant to get married in Fiji last May. International border closures forced them to postpone to August but Covid stopped that too. They settled on May of this year, which led to October and now, May 16 next year.

“This year rolled around and it was all looking good – the New Zealand bubble was happening and apparently the Pacific bubble was going to be next,” Godley, 41, says.

“But then our date got close again and the Pacific bubble still hadn’t happened so we had no choice yet again and had to postpone.

“We decided we would try for October because surely by then Australia would be opened to the Pacific – and then we heard news that Fiji was struggling with Covid so we had to postpone again.

“Our new date is May 16, 2022.”

After being together for 16 years and having children Tiana, 11, and Baylen, 9, they just want to make it official.

“We are heartbroken as we have been waiting a very long time to get married,” Godley says.

“And it’s hard to tell our kids every time we have to postpone again as they have been looking forward their parents being married for so long.

“Doc and I have lost the excitement of getting married and we hope every time we have to postpone that one day we will get that excitement back eventually.”

While resorts and vendors have been accommodating and understanding, they could only postpone, not cancel, so they don’t lose their money, she says.

“Unfortunately, people in Fiji are suffering financially and can’t really afford to give refunds so cancelling was going to be a harder option,” she says.

“We have lost some money and the excitement has gone but we know there are people out there who have had to go through a lot more than we have and we are at peace that eventually it will happen. And when it does that we will enjoy and appreciate it so much more.”

Amy Toovey and Grant Rawson are up to their third attempt at getting married but because of the backlog of couples trying to push weddings to next year, they can’t find a new date.

Grant Rawson and Amy Toovey have decided to elope after putting off their wedding three times.

“We will probably now elope to get married as soon as restrictions are lifted and pop on our dress and suit to have a reception later on to celebrate with friends and family,” Toovey, a 32-year-old event planner.

“Mentally we don’t have the strength to go through the whole planning process again. We just want to be married as soon as possible.”

The couple have been together for almost 12 years, and had originally planned their dream wedding in Port Stephens for July 2020 to coincide with quiet times in their employment.

“Fast-forward to March this year and we were in a better position as things started to open up so we decided to try again for July,” Toovey says.

“We planned the whole wedding from scratch again in three months, downscaling and having it much closer to home at the Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, a local spot we both loved.

“Everything was going great – we were two weeks out and I had my kitchen tea and hens party planned for the following weekend and after six months in the clear for Sydney, we finally allowed ourselves to believe it was happening for real.

“Then Bondi happened.”

Within a few days it all came crashing down, with Toovey forced to cancel her hens night and kitchen tea as half of her friends lived or worked in the LGAs put in early lockdown.

“Then it became evident that we needed to again pull the pin before full lockdowns were declared to try and give people notice and salvage what we could. So after teary phone calls to our wonderful vendors, we again pulled the pin on the wedding,” she says.

“The uncertainty weighs heavily on your mental health and sucks the joy out of what is supposed to be a really happy time.

“We are not confident in any forward date, and I’m glad we didn’t just push it back a month or two, as look at the position we’re still in.

“And with so many people who have had to postpone crammed into the end of 2021 and 2022 there is limited vendor availability if you want a weekend wedding. So we are going to have to completely reconsider everything.”

The couples’ employment has also been affected.

“My partner had taken long service leave and I held off on my next work contract so we could do a month-long road trip for our honeymoon, and since all the borders slammed shut we couldn’t even do that and the event industry is decimated,” Toovey says.

“So now I’m stuck at home unmarried and unemployed, but healthy and optimistic that we’ll get there eventually.”

Jessica Ramos, 28, and Ryan Heath, 34, just want to get married after having to postpone three times due to Covid.

Ryan Heath, 34, and Jessica Ramos, 28, have rescheduled their wedding three times. They’ve downsized, lost deposits and been heartbroken, time and time again.

“Our personal preference is to have children once married, so this is definitely stalling our future plans,” Ramos says.

“It’s extremely stressful and heartbreaking, but we are certainly determined.

“Your wedding is meant to be the best day of your life. Unfortunately the constant restrictions have now tainted the entire wedding industry, making things difficult for both wedding vendors and couples.

“What should have been a day filled with friends and family, will now be heavily impacted, with many loved ones missing and a plethora of rules and regulations that limit us from making the most of it.”

The Cambridge Park couple got engaged in 2019, and planned to marry in the Blue Mountains in September 2020.

“We were excited to celebrate with the majority of Ryan’s family flying in from South Africa and a portion of my family flying in from Europe,” Ramos says.

“We organised ourself and our family, placed our deposits and made our plans, knowing very little about the true extent of the outbreak that hit in early 2020.

“Since then, we have had to change our dates three times, downsize our wedding, sacrifice deposits and unfortunately due to border closures, honeymoon plans were cancelled and Ryan’s whole family are no longer able to attend.

“Flights were also booked for family members leaving them at the mercy of the travel companies.

“We have since booked a Hunter Valley venue and just postponed our August 20 wedding after the recent announcement, to January, hoping we will finally be able to tie the knot in the new year as it’s stopping us from moving forward.

“Wedding planning can be a challenge for couples, so given we have done it three times, I feel we can get through just about anything.”

Ruby Tuesday Matthews and her fiance Shannan Dodd were supposed to get married in July but had to postpone it.

Ruby Tuesday Matthews and her fiance Shannan Dodd had to cancel their planned July wedding due to the current Sydney lockdown.

They’ve rescheduled for 2022 but their wedding planner and stylist Kate O’Shea says most venues are already booking into 2023.

“Many venues I work with are now fully booked throughout 2022 and I can see the follow-up from this new lockdown rolling into 2023,” O’Shea, founder of The Wedding Series, says.

“With any wedding, my focus is on the guest experience and I want that guest to feel safe, comfortable and enjoy the experience. With the current Delta outbreak, who knows when guests will truly feel that way again.”