Should You Get Dressed Up? Zoom Wedding Etiquette That's Still Unclear

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WeddingWire reports that 43 percent of couples who carried out wedding ceremonies during the pandemic offered a virtual streaming option for guests who couldn’t be there in person. While some couples were wise to this tool before a pandemic made it necessary, the rise in virtual streaming of weddings was massive after COVID-19 changed our way of life. Like many changes that the pandemic caused, wedding ceremonies on Zoom brought about the question: So, how does this work exactly? As if understanding IRL wedding etiquette wasn’t difficult enough (like what does black tie versus garden party attire mean? And is it rude to take pictures during the ceremony?), now we have to learn how to conduct ourselves at a Zoom wedding.

Watching a wedding on Zoom is such a strange experience because, on the one hand, you are witnessing the most important day in somebody’s life. On the other hand, you’re watching it from your couch, which doesn’t feel very momentous. You might even be watching it from your bathroom (though you probably shouldn’t be). It’s very easy to quit some of the formalities to which we are accustomed to for IRL weddings when a screen and hundreds of miles separate us from the betrothed couples, but how comfortable is too comfortable? Here are some things that are unclear about Zoom wedding etiquette.

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Should your setting be formal?

You obviously can’t place yourself in the middle of a beautiful chapel or botanical garden to watch a Zoom wedding, but how lax can you be about your environment? I didn’t think I’d care when I got married on Zoom, but I was a bit disappointed to see some guests hovered over bowls of cereal between piles of mail watching my wedding. It’s not like my wedding was morning cartoons. It’s worth noting that weddings have become less formal over time, with more couples opting to get married outdoors and in venues like barns and farms over the years. Barn weddings became even more popular during the pandemic. But you still don’t want your guests watching from their toilets. The best move is to pick a nice, neutral background when watching someone’s wedding. And word to betrothed couples: if you want to set a certain tone, you can always send confirmed guests the same pretty virtual background to download before the big day. It will make for some cool screenshots of the event.

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Do you RSVP?

For a real wedding, you receive a physical invitation in the mail. It’s made of high-quality card stock, the envelope flaps look like little golden gates, and there is a smaller card within it on which you use to RSVP. When it’s a Zoom wedding, all you get is an email with a link to copy, meeting ID, and password. So do you RSVP? Do you let the bride and groom know if you’re coming? How early? As someone who got married on Zoom, I can say this: guest list drama is still a thing. We had our A list and our B list, and there are some estranged family members whose relationships are so bad, we wouldn’t dare even have them on the same screen together. So, we invited our favorites first. If they said no, we knew it was safe to invite the family they were beefing with. This is just one of the reasons the bride and groom might appreciate knowing if you’ll be “attending.” If you can’t, at least drop a note stating why rather than ghosting them. They didn’t send the invite to everyone, so you should feel honored to be on the “guest” list.

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Do you get dressed up?

Typically, getting dressed for a wedding takes some time. You break out the good jewelry. You do your hair for a long time or have a professional do it. You wear great makeup because you know there will be a lot of pictures. So what about on Zoom? Do you have to go all out, even when your actual involvement will last maybe 30 minutes? Will you spend an hour getting ready for a one-hour on-screen event? Maybe you want to because you miss getting dressed up (rest assured you’ll have plenty of opportunities as soon as the world re-opens as research shows 2021 will be a very busy wedding year). So the thing with Zoom weddings is you don’t need to go all out, but don’t log on having clearly just rolled out of bed. The couple will only see you from the waist up, so you can put on a nice top and jewelry while staying in your leggings. But brush your hair and put on enough makeup to show you care.

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Do you send a gift?

WeddingWire reports that on average, wedding guests spend between $75 and $200 per gift for the couple. I was always taught that the gift should help offset the couple’s cost of the wedding, so if I knew they spent about $75 a plate per guest, I should give them a gift worth at least $75 for me, or $150 if I brought a plus-one. But if you go by that rule, what do you do when you’re not physically present for the event? If part of the gift is the “cost of admission” to enjoy the food, DJ, and open bar…what happens when there are none of those things? When we got married on Zoom, we didn’t expect gifts from anyone except for our parents, siblings, and grandparents (if we’re being honest). The most immediate family probably shouldn’t change the size of their wedding gift, since their gift for an IRL wedding wouldn’t have depended on the event, either. As for other guests who watched on Zoom, we were pleasantly surprised to receive a handful of $50 or $100 gift cards but truly did not expect it. If you had a Zoom wedding and were disappointed in how little of your registry was filled, you can visit RetailMeNot’s Spring for Savings event from March 3 to March 7. The company is offering discounts on the hundreds of items that sat on unfulfilled registries during the pandemic.

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Will there be social time?

I wish we’d cleared this up with our guests in advance of our Zoom wedding, but we had ours very early in the pandemic before any “normal” etiquette had been established. We had our guests log in right in time for the ceremony – when our minister had started the meter, to put in frankly – and all our guests wanted to chat. They knew each other and were excited to see so many familiar faces to briefly catch up. We couldn’t rudely cut them off, but we also didn’t have Zoom Pro and our minister charged by the half-hour. That meant we incurred a couple of extra charges by going over our time limit. Hopefully, couples have learned by now to send instructions such as “Please mute yourselves upon entering, the ceremony will begin promptly at X-o-clock.” But if they don’t, simply ask in advance what the deal is, and if there’s time to chat.

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Can you bring a plus-one?

When we had our Zoom wedding, one of my favorite family friends watched. She emailed me before to say, “I’ll be staying with friends. They’re so excited to see, too! They’ve never seen a Zoom wedding!” Suddenly I realized complete strangers were going to witness the most important day of my life, and I didn’t love that. But, it was a lesson for me. I should have notified guests in the invitation, “Please do not invite additional viewers before confirming with me.” Nobody knew the rules yet, but if you’re about to attend a Zoom wedding, now you know: ask the bride and groom before bringing someone along to watch. Even if it is over Zoom, it’s still a private moment.

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Can you give a speech?

What if you feel moved to say something during a virtual reception? Should you just start chatting? Should you drop a note in the Zoom chat and ask to speak? As with many aspects of Zoom wedding etiquette, it’s a good idea to cover these things with the couple before the event. It gets awkward for a couple to have to reject your request to make a speech in front of everybody in the same way it’s awkward at a real wedding when someone has to grab the microphone out of the drunk relative’s hand before they happen to say something everyone will regret.

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Do you arrive early?

Now that I’ve explained some challenges in the way of my Zoom wedding, like not having Zoom Pro (meaning you can’t go over 45 minutes with more than three attendees) and the struggles of paying for a minister by the half-hour, you may already know the answer to this question. As with a real wedding, the guests should wait for the couple, and not the other way around. It can cost the couple money if they have to wait for guests and are paying a minister. Furthermore, it makes the couple feel like you don’t care about their big day. You don’t need to log in a half-hour early, but even logging in five minutes early can relieve the bride and groom of a lot of stress.

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Can you record it?

Much of the Zoom etiquette will fall on the couple to set ground rules and communicate those clearly, and in advance. That includes whether or not guests can record the ceremony. At a real wedding, couples may not want guests recording it simply because they want them to be present, and not hold their phones up. On Zoom, this isn’t as much of an issue. You just hit record for the session, and then the guest experience/interaction is unaltered. But, for privacy reasons, the couple may not want any recordings to exist – outside of their own. If you’re the ones getting married, you can choose settings in the event that limit who can record, so that makes it easy to get what you want, without having to awkwardly lay down any laws.