UNITED IN MATRIMONY
A small but growing number of brides and grooms are opting out of falling into debt but still want to celebrate their union
More couples are saying ‘I do’ to group weddings at pop-up chapels,
When Diane Huynh and Andrew Tran exchanged vows at a pop-up wedding chapel on the rooftop of the Drake Hotel on Feb. 16, they weren’t alone.
Huynh was the fourth of eight brides to walk down the aisle toward her prospective intended that sunny afternoon. Each couple had a private wedding ceremony but split the venue and the cost.
The sharing economy has arrived in the wedding world.
A small but growing number of brides and grooms are opting out of falling into debt after falling in love.
And wedding planners such as Primp & Pop, Love Collective and Love By Lynzie, who put on this pop-up event, are leading the local movement.
With the average cost of a wedding in Canada hovering at around $27,000, couples often are putting off exchanging vows indefinitely.
These couples each spent $2,000 for their turnkey wedding in Toronto, where a single ceremony at such a coveted downtown venue could ding couples for many times that amount. The average cost of renting a Canadian venue was $8,000 last year, according to a survey of nearly 400 newlyweds shared exclusively with the Star by online marketplace WeddingWire Canada.
A low-cost wedding gives couples in costly cities more options than elopement if they don’t want to forgo a milestone event, says Love By Lynzie founder Lynne Kent, who provides both the pop-up service as well as more lavish wedding planning services. This was her second pop-up at the Drake.
“We’re now offering a service that never existed before to this group of people who would have DIY’d their own elopement or gone to City Hall,” says Kent, who is planning pop-up chapels in July and September at the Drake Devonshire Inn in Prince Edward County and the Evergreen Brick Works site off Bayview Ave.
The Drake Hotel chapel with its “winter boho” decor theme and sunny rooftop patio was a step up from what many consider a more sterile ceremony at City Hall.
For $1,999 before tax, Kent arranged for the venue and decor, live musicians, an officiant to preside over the ceremony, a photographer to document the event and shoot posed portraits of the bride and groom. The price included an hour reception with cocktails for 20 loved ones on the Sky Yard, which was gussied up with sheets of rope, lace and paper chains strung over a “boozy hot cocoa” table.
Charity was a driving force behind this event, which was filmed for a show called Crazy Beautiful Weddings. Kent solicited donations from sponsors — including florists and decor companies — and donated $350 from each couple’s payment to Camp Oochigeas for kids with cancer.
It’s a way to “give back” in an industry that is “superficial” at times, she says. Future wedding pop-ups will support Photographers Without Borders and the Evergreen Brick Works Children’s Garden.
“In a (traditional) wedding, you’re working with an individual client, but you’re not really doing anything for the community,” says Kent, who was looking for a way to give back to the city while giving couples their milestone moment.
And the milestones achieved on that February day at the Drake felt no less like a wedding than any other lavish ceremony. As Huynh walked down the aisle toward Tran, family on either side, the saxophonist and electric guitarist played the couple’s choice of processional song — Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together” — and the ceremony proceeded like most others: toddlers were wrangled at the back, relatives raised smartphones to document the event as a photographer ambled up and down the aisle. There were jokes about sweaty palms, vows were recited and bubbles were blown. The couple was whisked off for photography as the guests sampled cookies and other sweets with rum-spiked hot cocoa.
After about an hour on the rooftop, a planner politely ushered the party out of the space to reset cushions and clear cups in time for the next ceremony. As another couple walked the aisle, Huynh and Tran’s guests gathered in the lobby while the photo session wrapped up. The group parted ways soon after. The newlyweds planned an evening with friends that night and a celebratory dinner with family later that weekend. They honeymooned in Aruba at the end of February.
“It’s the best of both worlds,” says Huynh of what she calls her “down-to-earth” ceremony with a professional touch that she didn’t have to plan herself.
The couple, both 30, decided last year — after dating since high school — to get married and have a small summer ceremony with cocktails and their closest friends and family. They earmarked between $10,000 and $15,000, but after making calls, Huynh realized the hidden costs of even a small wedding were more than expected. According to the WeddingWire Canada newlyweds survey, the average total cost of awedding ceremony and reception last year was $27,000, with couples hiring as many as 13 different vendors on average. Costs include an $8,000 venue, a $450 officiant, a $2,600 photographer, $1,400 flowers, a $1,100 DJ, a $460 cake and $480 for hair and makeup — not to mention the groom’s attire ($550) and the bride’s wedding dress ($1,800).
“It became so much of a headache that we just dropped those plans,” Tran says. Besides, the young couple are just getting their careers off the ground — she’s a librarian, he’s a paramedic — and are looking to buy a home. As the pricing came into focus, a formal wedding didn’t seem in the cards.
When they read about Kent’s first pop-up chapel last year, they decided they had to be a part of the next one. By doing so, they chose to forgo much of the glamour of a more traditional service, including a lengthy dinner and open-bar reception, and go for the scaledback option, securing a beautiful downtown Toronto venue for pennies in comparison.
That $27,000 Canadian average is likely far lower than what the average couple spends in Toronto, says Michelle Cliffe, founder of Love Collective, a Toronto Island events planning company that specializes in low-cost wedding packages, including wedding pop-ups for about $2,500 per couple at existing events such as music festivals (with varying guest list accommodation) and a $10,000 wedding share where two couples get six hours each at a venue fit for 100 guests.
This is an option for people who don’t want to start a relationship with massive debt, says Cliffe, who launched Love Collective last year out of frustration with what has become the “new normal” in the wedding planning industry — couples saddled with long-lasting debt for short-term glitz.
“I see the expense, the stress and the decor that goes to waste,” and want to offer an alternative, says Cliffe, who also runs sister food company A Good Fork. She rents decor items from vendors and prefers potted plants to cut flowers. Flooding on Toronto Island last summer postponed many of her 2017 wedding events, so Cliffe’s first Love Collective nuptials will take place this year.
Despite an eco-friendly and economical business mandate, Cliffe has heard negative “chatter” from wedding professionals who worry her concept cheapens the industry and takes business away from those who plan traditional events.
“They don’t want that system to be disrupted,” she says. She understands the concern, but doesn’t believe her business either undercuts or devalues anyone, since the couples she is working with likely wouldn’t have hired a wedding planner if they didn’t have a less costly option.
Bryn Armstrong of Primp & Pop, a Toronto events planner that does pop-ups and elopements for as low at $1,500, thinks there’s room for both too. “Of course there are going to be people who still have the traditional modern wedding where they have 120 people in a big reception hall,” she says. Huynh and Tran were never going to be those people.
“It wouldn’t have fit my personality and my budget,” Huynh says.
Without the February pop-up, they might have settled on an elopement or a civil ceremony. But they wanted more.
“We had originally talked about going down to City Hall, getting the marriage licence, signing some papers, and that would be it. But we still felt that we wanted some kind of celebration,” she says.
The low-cost pop-up was the perfect middle ground. Had this option been around before, their long 16 years of dating might have been capped off with I-dos earlier.
“I definitely think we might have gotten married a lot sooner,” she says.