YOUR wedding day is meant to be one of the best days of your life, a celebration with friends and family, so you cannot help but feel for those whose special days have been affected.

Boris Johnson’s announcement last week revealed the highly-anticipated delay to the full easing of lockdown restrictions due to the Delta variant of coronavirus.

Any number of guests can now be invited to a wedding ceremony or reception held outside or in a Covid-secure public venue, but venues must decide how many people they can host while adhering to social distancing rules.

They must also provide table service, while dancing and singing are still restricted.

All the rulings provide a headache for Susan Hart – a Knutsford resident of 11 years – who is to be wed to her partner on Saturday, July 10 at St Oswald’s Church, Lower Peover and have a reception at the Mere Court hotel.

“We were 50/50 about whether or not it would be allowed with full capacity or not. We had kind of resigned ourselves to the fact that we were going to have to reduce our numbers to 30,” Susan, 44, said.

“But the problem is all our guests are thinking ‘oh yeah we can go as they’re allowed unlimited numbers’ but it’s not that simple.”

Susan continued: “It’s a bit of a nightmare really, to be honest.

“We have had to cancel the DJ for the evening as no dancing is allowed and our evening BBQ will have to be table service only.

“Though the wedding planner Megan has been extremely helpful in answering all of our questions since the new rules were announced.”

There are still rules in place to hinder the spread of the virus as well as the aforementioned at the reception, and they include guests wearing a face mask during the church ceremony and well as being seated throughout the day unable to mingle with each other.

“We were going to have champagne and canapes to greet everyone and now that has to be seated so we can’t just wander around and so ‘thanks for coming and hope you had a really nice day’, it’s not socially permitted,” Susan, a HR manager, added.

“Obviously we’re really excited, we know whatever happens we’re going to make the best of it and we’re going to have a lovely day and everybody that we love and care about is there to support us but it has just taken the shine off a little bit that we can’t go over and actually greet our guests.”

Test events with hundreds in attendance are still able to go ahead however the numbers at weddings are limited – something Susan feels is unfair.

She added: “It is not fair at all. A huge life event and we can’t enjoy ourselves the way we wanted to – it just isn’t fair.

“All in all we will not be having the day that we wanted but we intend to make the best of a bad situation.”