SAY YES TO THE UNCERTAINTY
Wedding industry embraces flexibility
Leah Dolgoy and Mollie Witenoff were planning to get married on May 31, the anniversary of their engagement last year, before COVID-19 forced them to make what in March seemed like a wrenching decision.
But, as they discovered, it was easy enough to reschedule their 170-guest wedding for a date in November thanks to the flexibility and understanding of the restaurant where they plan to hold the ceremony, the vendors who are supplying their nuptials and their families. And now, as the devastation of the coronavirus spreads, the couple say they have gained a new perspective.
“We felt kind of sorry for ourselves that we had to move the wedding,” Dolgoy said of the decision they made when the Quebec government announced the first restrictions on the size of gatherings to prevent the spread of the virus.
“But there are so many people who are suffering a lot in this time. ... Postponing a wedding sucks, but it’s not the end of the world. We’ll still be able to bring our family and friends together, we’ll just do it at a different time or in a different way.”
Flexibility is the operative word in Montreal’s wedding industry, said Camille Gagnon, a freelance events coordinator who works with three event-planning agencies in the city. Most weddings she knows of are so far being postponed until later in the year.
“Not a lot of couples so far have cancelled their wedding or postponed it to 2021,” Gagnon said.
“I think what’s going to happen is it’s going to be more of a condensed season this year.”
Postponed weddings mean “delayed revenue,” she added. And with a shorter season, “it’s going to be a bit tricky and it’s probably going to be a slower year than previous years.”
Still, Gagnon said the wedding industry is so far more fortunate than the corporate events industry. Corporate events are being cancelled outright, she said.
Last year, Gagnon said she personally handled more than two dozen weddings in a span of twoand-a-half months, suggesting that the coronavirus must be interfering with a lot of couples’ plans to say “I do” this year.
“It’s not an easy situation,” she said.
“Couples plan for this for sometimes a year, a year-and-a- half, sometimes two years . ... They’ve been planning this for a while, they ’ve been saving up for a while. They’ve had people plan to fly in for their special day. It’s kind of heartbreaking, but everyone is being the most flexible possible.”
For example, venues have been flexible about scheduling new dates, she said. Some of them are even opening up new days of the week for bookings that they didn’t necessarily make available before, she added.
The Montreal wedding industry has an advantage in that local planners and vendors were collaborative even before the pandemic struck, Gagnon said.
For example, if a wedding planner was already booked for a particular weekend, they would refer a new couple inquiring about that weekend to someone else, she said.
Witenoff and Dolgoy say their new Nov. 21 wedding date seems far enough away for now, so they aren’t contemplating an alternative, such as live-streaming the ceremony.
However, Witenoff said: “We’re approaching Nov. 21 with a lot more flexibility and go-with-theflow mentality than when we originally planned for May 31. Initially, we were very attached to Plan A and now we’re hopeful about Plan B. But we sort of recognize that we may have to move to a Plan C depending on how things shake out in the next several months.”
Meanwhile, the rabbi who will officiate their wedding has offered to do a traditional pre-wedding blessing with them on the weekend they were supposed to get married in May as a way of honouring the original date, Dolgoy said.
And if Quebec’s places of worship aren’t reopened by then, she said, the rabbi will include the blessing in the regular service that’s currently being broadcast using the video-conferencing platform Zoom.
The go-with-the-flow attitude is a big shift for a couple that had every detail of their wedding planned, down to the gift bags for out-of-town guests, Dolgoy said.
But the crisis has sharpened their focus on what matters, she added.
“When we gather everybody together eventually, hopefully in November, I think it will be that much sweeter because we’ll know how meaningful it is to be able to gather, be able to have people we love around us and be able to hug them again,” Dolgoy said.