A big day for the wedding industry
Countless brides and grooms to-be are cheering on the COVID-vaccine effort as they wait ever-so patiently to tie the knot in their dream ceremonies.
The vendors who supply their venues, flowers, photos and food are rooting equally hard, as the massive wedding industry has been devastated during the nearly yearlong pandemic.
“Slowly, but surely, our industry will come back,” said Boyd Bryan, director of Corinthian Houston, a classical wedding venue in downtown. “Weddings are one of themost beautiful things in life, and we can’t wait to be a part of that for our customers again.”
Bryan was among the vendors and engaged couples who flocked to the in-person Bridal Extravaganza Show at the George R. Brown Convention Center. It’s one of the first times the largest wedding show in the U.S. has been held face-to-face in a year.
Nadine Moon, owner of Who Made the Cake? in Houston, said the pandemic almost closed her custom wedding cake business.
She secured a Payroll Protection Program loan and loyal employees took some cuts as needed to keep the business solvent. She now has to try to recoup those losses this year.
“We’re a small business, and
everything has come to a standstill,” she said. “It’s so sad to think how close we came to losing everything we’ve worked so hard for.”
Her business suffered during the pandemic, but Moon feels fortunate that the 18-year-old Houston bakery survived.
“You get to know people in the industry, like photographers and DJs, who also rely on weddings for their livelihood, and I’ve seen a lot of those people I’ve connected with lose their businesses this year,” she said.“just breaks my heart for them, and I truly consider us lucky.”
The bridal show was a beacon of hope for vendors — a sign that their businesses will recover.
Paul Scorry and Katy Merlet are co-owners of At the Shire, a wedding and events venue located in Huntsville., that opened its doors in March 2020, right at the onset of the pandemic.
At first, couples simply pushed their wedding dates back, thinking the shutdown would be over in a couple months. As the pandemic raged on, clients began canceling en masse.
“Our first wedding was scheduled for March, but that got canceled,” Scorry said. “Then they pushed it back to October. And then they canceled altogether because their family wouldn’t travel.”
Scorry and Merlet managed to keep their business afloat without taking out a PPP loan, but exhausted
their savings. “Paul invested his life savings in this,” Merlet said. “But the fact that we’re getting a lot of bookings gives us a lot of hope that we’ll recover.”
Bryan lamented the loss of income to his industry and sympathized with the couples who saw plans for their dream weddings vanish.
“We had couples move their wedding dates back three or four times,” he recalled. “What’s even worse is that some people had to
make some very difficult decisions, like whether or not they had to walk away from a hefty deposit. But if you lost your job, sometimes that’s the decision you had to make.”
Melanie Chase had planned a May wedding. When the pandemic hit, she worked with her venue tomove the date back to October. By August, she said, it was clear that the COVID-crisis wouldn’t be over in time for her wedding.
“We kept thinking if we just moved it back, things would be back to normal in a few months,” she said. “That didn’t happen. In someways I feel like we had to start the planning all over again.”
Chase and her mother attended the show in the hopes of finding a new photographer and florist. Her previous one both went out of business during the pandemic.
“The florist — we felt so bad for him. A lot of the
farmers that grew the flowers lost their businesses, so (the florist) had trouble getting flowers,” she said. “And it’s not like flowers stay fresh during the shutdown. He lost a lot of inventory.”
Sabrina Witht and her fiance, Kendal Reed, got engaged just before Christmas. The couple is planning a wedding for late 2021.
“It feels overwhelming because I’ve been in a couple-weddings thatwere supposed to be 2020 weddings, and they had just like so many ups and downs,” Witht said. “So hopefully it’s not like that. We’re basing all our plans on the hope that this year is different.”
Witht and Reed are depending on the COVID-19 vaccine to make their wedding a reality. “All of his family does not live in Texas, so we’re hoping that the vaccine will make travel safer again,” Witht said.
Bryan is also relying on the promise of a vaccine to help the industry recover. “The big thing we hear from customers is that they’re ready to move forward and make plans again because the vaccine gives them hope,” he said.