Moving your wedding date!

Moving Your Wedding Date – On this episode of The Wedding Band Show, I talked with Tony Ward from Blue Moose Wedding Band about the easiest way to move your wedding suppliers to a new date! Tony starts by saying that it doesn’t look like there will be a return to regular weddings until late 2021 at the earliest unless the vaccine rollout speeds up!

The first step?

So if you are a wedding couple that has to move your wedding because of restrictions what’s the first thing you should do? Tony breaks down the three categories of wedding couples.  

6 Wedding Guest

The first category is couples who want to go ahead with the wedding even if there are only 6 guests. In this case, they won’t want live music and should just contact their band to inform them of the cancellation. Usually, this means that you lose your deposit.

25 to 50 Wedding Guests

The second category is people who are waiting to see if 25 or 50 guests will be allowed. The best thing to do in this case is to wait until the next official announcement. It’s not a bad idea to have a ‘Plan B’ in place in case the restrictions are not lifted in time.

100+ Wedding Guests

The third category is couples who just want to postpone and don’t want the stress of worrying about their guest list numbers. In this situation, the best advice is to go to your venue first and get a list of four or five available dates. Once you have the available dates Tony suggests you send one email by cc’ing all your wedding suppliers on it. 

 Then all you have to do is sit back and wait for the replies. Once every supplier has emailed you back you can look at everybody’s available dates and move to do date that most of your suppliers are available for. One major advantage to this is that you get to keep most of your preferred suppliers that you’ve already worked hard to source. You also won’t lose as much money in terms of deposits which are usually non-refundable!

The wrong way to move a wedding date?

The alternative to this is to pick one date and then email every supplier individually to check they’re available. In this case, there is a great chance that you are going to lose some of your preferred wedding suppliers and also deposits! It also means that you have to go back to stage 1 and research wedding suppliers who are available for your new date.

Tony also recommends that you keep an open mind when you are looking at your dates. You’ve nothing to lose by getting several dates off your venue and then making your decision.

Wedding Band Association Deposit Scheme


Blue Moose is also a member of the Wedding Band Association which means that if they are not available for your new date your original deposit can be transferred over to another band in the WBA. 

The future of Irish Weddings?

Brian asks Tony if he sees any changes in weddings going forward but Tony is confident that the large Irish weddings will return. It might mean an overall average reduction of about 20 guests but he doesn’t see a future where smaller weddings become the norm in Ireland!

As a rough guess, Tony thinks that wedding bands should be playing for 25 guests from July. It all really depends on the vaccine rollout and how quickly people can get vaccinated. He can’t really see a return to live music in pubs or venues until Christmas 2021 but again it depends on the vaccine rollout in Ireland.

A Wedding Band For 25 Guests?


On the point of wedding couples worrying about having a band for 25 guests Tony still recommends that you should have bands when it’s allowed. He explained that if it’s a case of a budget problem because you’re having a smaller wedding just talk to your suppliers and they might be able to help you out. He is also aware of the fact that everybody thinks of Bluemoose as a big rock band but they will adapt to suit a smaller crowd.  

In summary,


Moving Your Wedding Date – If you do have to move your wedding date the best thing to do first is to get a list of available dates from your venue. Compose one email and send it to all your suppliers and wait until everybody replies with availability. Then simply pick the best date that most of your preferred wedding suppliers are available for!

How to contact Blue Moose?

For information on Blue Moose use these links,

Website – https://www.bluemoose.ie/
Youtube – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCr8uTwqw-Nt23WbxfdSf7-w
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/bluemooseband
Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/bluemooseband/

To find out more information about The Brian Mc Dermott Band use these links,

Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/thebrianmcdermottband/
Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/brian_mc_dermott/

Video Work – https://pixelproductions.ie/

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