Hoda Kotb and fiancé Joel Schiffman still plan to get married. It’s now just a matter of when.
During a conversation on Wednesday’s TODAY with Hoda & Jenna about a wedding boom in 2021, Hoda gave co-host Jenna Bush Hager an update on her own wedding plans after the pandemic postponed their ceremony a few times last year.
“We’re just trying to make sure that everyone can travel,” she said. “That’s really what we want to do.”
“We want to do it in a place that we love deep in our soul that means a lot to us and we want our closest to come. But Joel kept saying, ‘Why are we waiting? Let’s just go already.’”
Jenna said she thinks Hoda and Joel might just spontaneously tie the knot.
“I feel like you’re going to come back from one weekend and just be like, ‘Here,’” she said, alluding to the fact Hoda would be married. “It could happen.”
Hoda and Joel, who share daughters Haley Joy, 4, and Hope Catherine, 2, got engaged in 2019 and had planned to wed in a beachside ceremony in August 2020 before the pandemic. They bumped that back to last November, but the pandemic once again forced them to call an audible.
“We are kind of guessing that it will (be postponed),” she said on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” in June 2020. “It was a destination wedding, which would mean people getting on planes. We were kind of holding out to see what could happen, but the destination we were going to is turning into one of the (coronavirus) hot spots. So, it looks like we may have to postpone.”
She explained in October having to postpone their ceremony a second time. She told People magazine that she wasn’t sure if she and Joel would end up having a destination wedding after all, though she still wanted to get married by the sea.
“Of course it’s going to be a beach wedding,” she said at the time. “We’ll probably do it somewhere around New York.”
“I think, just because, why would we (travel), given what’s happening?” she added. “And I don’t know how quickly people are going to be able to travel again.”
While things have not gone according to plan, Hoda has managed to roll with the punches. On TODAY in November, during the week she and Joel were supposed to get married, she said plans for a big wedding don’t matter so much.
“I’m going to be really happy to get married, and I’m also perfectly fine right now as we nest and do our things.”