As the reality of the COVID-19 pandemic sets in and advisements from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) continue to encourage social distancing and restrict gatherings, weddings scheduled for the coming months have all become crises to manage, rather than reasons to celebrate. As we come together by keeping our distances, couples and families worldwide are facing the economic, social, and logistical challenges of postponing, reconfiguring, and, at times, replanning their weddings for later dates.
We can only imagine how stressful this must be for you trying to make some really difficult decisions. To address your concerns and answer some questions you might have, we created this page to help our clients understand more about our policies and help provide guidance about what to do as you’re likely wondering how and when to postpone your wedding, and what to expect in that process.
The majority of couples planning to wed in of 2020 have rescheduled their weddings to 2021 while some are still waiting to see.
The key, it seems, is to focus on postponements and rescheduling, rather than cancellations to avoid losing retainers. We have been really encouraging our clients to postpone because we’re all in this together.
We normally do 20 weddings per year, and so far none were canceled—and that’s the way we recommend all of our clients to do because their retainers will apply for their future events.
If you are planning an event this year, use this time to have conversations and check-ins with your planner and your team of vendors, particularly with your key players and venue as soon as possible. Your main goal right now is to stay healthy, keep yourselves and your guests safe, and minimize loss and risk.
When deciding whether to postpone, consider your planning timeline in addition to the date of your event. Though any wedding on the immediate horizon certainly requires a contingency plan and a new date in the future, expert planners are also flagging events that could be hindered by a loss of time in the planning process, like destination events or multiday events here or abroad.
If you’re considering postponing, speak with your venue and your vendors now, just to check who would be available on any of the new dates your venue has available. Key considerations are the vendors that can only be in one place at one time: your band, photographer, officiant, etc. Run any new dates you’re considering by all your key guests as well, and line up all things that have no penalty, like a room block at a hotel. Place holds on anything you don’t have to be on the hook for ASAP. Line it all up and prepare so that you can get first dibs on those new dates.
We have discussed extensively with other wedding vendors/photographers and also our lawyer about how to handle this unprecedented situation as we really want to strike a balance between being understanding/accommodating to our clients but at the same time take care of ourselves and our families. We definitely understand that it’s a difficult time for everyone and we really hope that you will give us an opportunity to reschedule your wedding.
The payment(s) paid helps guarantee that we will be working for you on a particular date(s) or any other date(s) to which we agree to reschedule the wedding. With the payments paid and the date locked in for you, this prevents us from working with another couple who may decide to still continue the wedding but scale it down or reschedule the wedding to a future date that we are available instead of canceling the event altogether. The payments paid so far are the cost to retain our service for you and thus not refundable by its nature and as described in the agreement: “if Client decides to cancel the wedding, Client agrees to forego all the payments paid.”
Please kindly note that this isn’t necessarily a force majeure event because the event can be rescheduled to the future.
Some of our clients purchased wedding insurance and are able to get refunds via their insurance too. We strongly encourage you to look into if you are forced to cancel your wedding because of reasons beyond your control.
However, we definitely understand that this is a very difficult decision to make and we will be allowing our clients to use the retainer payment (within the next 18 months) towards any other photography service including portraits (post-wedding, family, and etc..) and print/album purchase from the session or any other photography service you might need if you choose to cancel the agreement. This is the solution that many wedding photographers in the industry agreed that is the best and think that it is very fair to clients. We will provide a full refund if we are able to book another client on your wedding date.
We do allow you to reschedule your weddings to new wedding dates that Nat is available. An option to work with our lead associate photographers is also on the table (please see the last section of this page). In short, there is no rescheduling fee if there is a ban on public group gatherings on your date but read more below.
Currently, we do not impose any rescheduling for 2020 clients.
This is a great option to consider and some of our clients decided to opt for this route: having a smaller/more intimate elopement or having a smaller wedding ceremony and postpone the wedding reception to a later date. If you decide to opt for this route, we will provide you a new quote (based on the pricing information that first sent to you). If the new quote is less than the total payments you have already made, we will allow you to use the difference towards purchasing prints, products, or other services within the next 18 months after the event date.
Example: You have already made a total payment of $2,500 (could be one or more payments) and already did an engagement session ($500 value as in the quote). If you decide to opt for an elopement instead ($1,200), you will be able to use $2,500 – $500 = $2,000 towards elopement and will still have $2,000 – $1,200 = $800 left to be used for prints, albums and other services.
We have tried our best to accommodating and open dates (Check Nat’s availability here) for our clients in both 2020 and 2021 for clients that decide to reschedule and we will be waiving any rescheduling fee if the new dates are no later than 2021. As a boutique wedding photography studio, we only take on approximately 20 weddings in a year and there should be a lot of available dates on the calendar. We would encourage clients to look into Friday or Sunday (or even weekday) wedding dates if you are looking to book us during the prime wedding season to open up more availability. Based on our experience so far working with clients who decided to reschedule, if you are flexible about the new dates and offer us some options, there is usually no problem securing the vendor team you have.
With that saying, we do understand that there are a lot of factors involved in planning including the venue’s availability, guests/families’ availability, and other vendors’ availability. If Nat is not available on the date you requested, we do have lead associate photographers who can step in. Joshua and Dominique (who are among our top lead associate photographers) have been working closely with Nat for several years and we are more than confident that, by working closely with you and other vendors, they will be able to deliver exceptional final products that will cherish the beautiful memories of events you are planning for a very long time. In addition, Suzanne is also joining our team — she no longer accepts a wedding on her own.
© 2026 Nat Wongsaroj Photography · Washington, D.C. · Available Worldwide
