Covid-19….. social distancing….. lockdown….. self-isolation….. key-workers. These are all words and phrases that we never, or very rarely used just a few months ago. But they’re now very much part of our everyday vocabulary.

Covid-19 is affecting us all in many different ways, so I really don’t think it would be right to go all the way through lockdown without writing about it in my blog!

Enjoying a family walk during lockdown

This time last year, I was gearing up for another busy wedding season and pretty much going about business as usual. My days were taken up meeting brides for trials, dealing with a stream of enquiries, and travelling to the many lovely wedding venues that Scotland has to offer, to beautify my excited bridal parties.

If someone had said to me then, I would spend at least 3 or 4 (or potentially more!) of my busiest months of 2020 with no bookings, I would have laughed in their face. But back in March that scenario became reality. As social distancing measures were put in place, and then eventually lockdown, I panicked about what would happen to my business and could only watch in horror as every booking I had was wiped from my diary. Not only that, but I then had to deal with a mountain of admin as devastated brides were forced to rearrange weddings they’d spent months and years planning for. It was just awful for everyone involved.

Now I certainly don’t want to take away from the devastation Covid-19 has caused throughout the world, including the massive loss of life, front-line workers scared to go to work, people being separated from family and friends and businesses being forced to close. It’s something we’ve never experienced before, and hopefully never will again.

Just back from an early morning run (excuse the red face!)

But what I do want to do is try and focus on some positives that have come out of this situation. First and foremost is I’m loving spending more time together with my family. Before this I was always rushing about, juggling work, running about after my kids and quite often my husband and I were like ships that passed in the night. Now we’re all home together, we all eat together at mealtimes, and we’re enjoying a bit more of a relaxed pace of life. Don’t get me wrong, we’ve all had our patience tested at times over the past few weeks, but we’re actually coping OK with our new normal.

Another massive positive is the fact I’ve really got to know some of the other lovely hair and makeup artists in the Scottish wedding industry. Over the years, I’ve found myself working alongside many other hair and makeup artists, and we would often have a chat, but now we’ve all got a bit closer. With so many weddings having to be rescheduled it was inevitable that at some point we were going to be booked on a bride’s new date. So we’ve all pulled together and are helping one another out to make sure no bride will have to go without a hair or makeup artist on her big day.  Not only that, we’ve all been keeping one another’s spirits up and have also jumped on the #passthechallenge bandwagon where we’ve created a video to showcase our hair/makeup work, passing combs/makeup brushes between us. Who knew it was so difficult to catch a comb?!

My hairstyle for #passthechallenge (just passed the comb to the next person!)

So, what does the future hold for weddings in Scotland? There’s been lots of speculation lately…. there’ll be no more weddings this year, weddings will re-start again in September, the only weddings this year will be with a very limited number of people.  Every day I read something new, and as much as we can second guess, no-one has the answer to this question yet. No-one knows exactly when weddings will be running again as normal, or what that normal might be!

But what I do know, is the last couple of months have taught me that I actually CAN cope with a nightmare work scenario being thrown at me, and there will be positives in every bad situation. This won’t last forever, but until then I’ll keep focusing on those positives and look forward to the day that weddings resume, and we can all get back to work.