Letter from the Columbus Weddings Editor

They say the only constant in life is change, and in my experience, they’re right. In the last two and a half years, COVID-19 changed everything about the way we live our lives, do our jobs … and plan our weddings. But with caseloads and hospitalizations staying relatively low after the omicron surge in early 2022, we can finally begin settling into whatever “the new normal” means for us and applying the lessons we’ve learned over the course of the pandemic.

In the world of weddings, that means we can again extend invitations to second and third cousins—or we can choose to share the livestream link to our intentionally small ceremony. It means we can elope to get that perfect wedding date and host a blowout reception on a Saturday (or Friday, or Sunday) that’s more convenient. Above all, it means that setting a date no longer need feel like a gamble: Will caseloads spike? Will there be another mask mandate? Will we have to postpone again? In other words, wedding planning can once again be the joyful and only occasionally stressful process it was before.

That’s where we come in, by the way. We’re so excited to bring you nearly 100 pages of larger-scale and mask-free wedding inspiration once more. There are tips to personalize your day in new ways, a look at wedding vendors who are expanding into venue ownership and of course our Real Weddings section, which takes a deeper dive into the local weddings of five unique couples. There’s also the mega-feature on the winners of our third annual Best of Columbus Weddings reader poll. From three-time champs to newcomers to the ballot, these 50-plus vendors were named the best of the best by more than 8,300 voters.

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Before I sign off, I’d be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the departure of our art director, Alyse Pasternak. Alyse and I have worked diligently on many projects outside of Columbus Weddings since I joined the Dispatch Magazines team six years ago, but this publication has always felt like our baby—especially after we took on the monumental task of redesigning it in 2020.

Alyse’s calm demeanor and willingness to go above and beyond her normal job duties (how many designers will write headlines or generate story ideas? Answer: very few) have saved my sanity countless times, and I’ll be forever grateful for our partnership and friendship.

When asked if she’d like to say anything about her eight years as the Columbus Weddings art director, her first response was just a flurry of crying emojis—too difficult, she said, to put her love for this publication into words. “Not everyone can say they got their dream job,” she wrote in a farewell email to our colleagues. “It’s been a real honor and privilege to do something I love for as long as I have.”

I hope you’ll all join me in wishing Alyse the best of luck in everything she does … not that she’ll need it, I think. Her next colleagues will be privileged to have her.

Happy planning,

Emma

This story first appeared in the fall/winter 2022 issue of Columbus Weddings, published in June 2022.