After postponing her wedding this fall, TODAY co-anchor Hoda Kotb is now planning to say “I do” to her fiancé, Joel Schiffman, sometime next summer.
Hoda officially delayed her and Joel's wedding in August amid the coronavirus pandemic and said it was a “super bummer.”
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“We're just waiting to see what is what with everything,” she told Entertainment Tonight at the time. “It's just like the show. I don't care where we do it, as long as we do it.”
The couple has been together for more than seven years and shares two daughters, Haley Joy, 3, and Hope Catherine, 1. Hoda told People in April that she’s not worried about signing on the dotted line because she and Joel “already feel married.”
“I’m so happy to say ‘I do’ and I’m also happy to do it whenever we need to, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s a formality now,” she said in the interview.
Now, Hoda said she’s considering locations closer to home for sometime in summer 2021.
“Of course it’s going to be a beach wedding,” she told People in a story published Wednesday evening. “We’ll probably do it somewhere around New York.”
She added that the ceremony will likely be “a little bit more intimate” than originally planned.
"I think, just because, why would we (travel), given what's happening?" she said. "And I don't know how quickly people are going to be able to travel again."
Hoda added that despite the postponed wedding, the silver lining of the pandemic has been getting to spend more time with her kids.
"I just remember thinking to myself, I don't know that this kind of moment would ever have happened," she said. "And if you're into the silver linings, it changed everything. Like, I feel like I didn't miss a minute of Hope, not a minute. And how lucky am I? That I got to witness that.”
She added that prior to the pandemic bonding time, she was “unaware” her kids are “really headstrong."
"It's not like they're not listeners, but I, at least I know that they are determined,” she told People. “They're not going to be pushed around. And that makes me feel good too. So they're tough."
Hoda also recently opened up about the possibility of adopting a third child.
“(We) have had many conversations about it: Can we? Yes. Will our family be better with it? Yes. Do we have enough love in the house? Yes,” Hoda said in an interview with People this week. "All the answers seem to say yes. So I think then you just wait and see if it’s meant to be."
Hoda added that the extra time at home has also helped show her that she “chose really well” in a partner.
"I think, sometimes when you're in tight quarters, you wonder, like a lot's being revealed. He's a world-class dad and one of the kindest people I think I've ever known, and you can see how someone is when they're under pressure," she said about Schiffman. "I think what's been revealed to me is he's everything I thought he was and more. And I think that that's reassuring.”
“Sometimes you're not quite sure how people react in a stressful situation," she added. "And quite frankly, we've been really lucky. We've had good times and every relationship goes through its valleys and we seem to have both had our valleys before we met. So I'm sure there are valleys ahead. But in this moment he's been really amazing."
