3 crisis PR lessons from a #CoronaBride

I had a backup crisis PR plan for my wedding’s backup plan. You read that right.

The wedding and events industry had minimal plans in place for crisis PR management—but when an international health pandemic impacts the world and causes even the events industry to create in-the-moment crisis plans, as PR professionals we’re left to wonder: What can we learn from this moving forward?

Here are three key takeaways for communicators trying to bring people together during the COVID-19 crisis:

1. Communicate early and often.

If there’s one thing I learned from planning a wedding during the year of the coronavirus, it’s how important it was to know what my options were early on.

If your client has to deliver bad news to their customers, it’s best to communicate it early on so that they always have control over the narrative and you can prepare for the backup.

For the wedding, had I sat around in early April waiting for this pandemic to end, I would’ve missed out on getting our first-choice vendors in place for our new date. We gave our guests clear dates as to when a postponement decision would be made by, what would happen to their room block deposits, and most importantly, when they would hear from us next.