Dampening of wedding industry may not be bad
‘‘VENUES will go out of business now,’’ said Ollie Ormond, owner and managing director of Kauri Bay Boomrock wedding venues in Wellington and Auckland, forecasting a 20% drop in guest numbers from its previous average of 97 guests for each wedding, which would make it ‘‘almost impossible to operate’’, even when the Alert Level 3 and 2 restriction of wedding ceremonies to 10 people was lifted.
Though it's not all bad, apparently, for the New Zealand wedding venue industry. Travel restrictions have prevented ‘‘destination weddings’’ (that's the term for swanning off to some allegedly desirable location, in New Zealand or overseas, to get married), and local venues are being booked instead.
For years, Civis has been puzzled by the increasing willingness of couples planning marriage to be exploited by the ‘‘wedding industry’’ — the average cost of a New Zealand wedding has reached $40,000.
Take wedding photography, for example. When Civis and spouse married, 52 years ago, the photographer took a few pictures of the bride and her parents before the service, and some unobtrusive snaps on the cathedral steps afterwards; then later, between main course and pudding of the wedding ‘‘breakfast’’ (actually an earlyafternoon lunch), which immediately followed the
11am service, bride, groom, bridesmaids and groomsmen withdrew briefly to the garden for a formal photograph (taking less than 10 minutes) while the guests were still enjoying the meal.
Now, the photographer seems to have become an extortionately expensive dictator, controlling the ceremony (sometimes at the cost of a late start to the service) to suit their own agenda, even in a church behaving intrusively, as if the main purpose of the ceremony is to achieve a gigantic gallery of photographs, hijacking bride and groom for an hour or four between service and reception and demanding that the guests perform like unrehearsed extras in a ‘‘sword and sandals’’ epic.
But wedding arrangements don't have to be so excessive. Civis knows a couple who were happy to get married in the wooden gazebo in the bride's parents' garden (her father had carefully swept the accumulated gum leaves out of it), with only the celebrant and the obligatory two witnesses present with them. The photos, taken by one of the witnesses, are a delight.
And Civis has heard of a couple arranging a barbecue for family and friends, then, in the middle of it, stilling the chatter for a simple marriage ceremony.
Covid19 has made New
Zealanders tighten their belts financially (that may not apply to their physical belts, with the extra baking done during lockdown) — in March there was a 5.4% drop in money owed on their credit cards. Let's hope personal debt reduction continues as lockdown ends.
One can sympathise with employees losing their jobs, but if couples planning to marry have been induced by Alert Levels 4, 3, and 2 to focus on the basic purpose of a marriage ceremony — a formal ‘‘serious and lifelong commitment to each other's good’’ (to quote A New Zealand Prayer Book He Karakia Mihinare o Aotearoa) — rather than the sugary, sexist, ‘‘happiest day of her life’’ (who knows what happiness the future will bring?) Babel's tower of bridetalk expectations cynically built by the wedding industry, that would be a welcome sign of sanity.
Bars will be allowed to open, subject to restrictions on their mode of operating, including patrons being seated, distanced, and served at their table by one person, on May 21.
But, as Associate Prof Nick Wilson, of Otago University's public health department, suggests, there's another restriction that should be applied — reduced trading hours.
Longer licensing hours contribute to increased crime (violent offending peaks after midnight on Friday and Saturday nights), disorder, traffic accidents and poor health outcomes. Reduced hours have the opposite effect.
It would be great if bars always closed earlier than 4am, but, at least during Level 2, when disorder risks spreading Covid19, they should close, at latest, by midnight.