‘I do’s’ turn into ‘not yets’ as weddings are postponed
Fear, caution, travel ban, venue closures push couples to pull plug on celebrations
They had tied the knot in a quick civil service at San Francisco’s City Hall last year, but Vitaly Golomb and Kateryna Mamyko-Golomb had looked forward all year to hosting a reception to celebrate with family and friends, many of them flying in from Europe.
For their March 21 reception, the newlyweds chose a venue that would be as classically San Francisco as City Hall — a private ballroom with city views and elegant Beaux Arts interiors.
As the date neared, they finalized their dinner menu, checked in with their DJ and photographer, and arranged for a tailor to do last-minute fittings for MamykoGolomb’s dress, which her mother was bringing from Ukraine.
But increasingly dire headlines about coronavirus and international travel prompted the San Carlos couple to pull the plug on their celebration on Wednesday
morning, hours before President Donald Trump announced a ban on most travel from Europe.
“A lot of our friends, about 30 percent of our guest list, were from Europe, U.K., Israel, other places,” said Golomb, who runs a boutique investment firm.
“We were also hearing from guests in higher-risk age groups who were concerned about making the trip. That led us to hit the brakes. The travel ban put the nail in the coffin.”
On Saturday, they learned just how wise their decision was: A family friend in his 70s, who was to fly up from Los Angeles, tested positive for COVID-19.
Fears about the spread of coronavirus have forced couples to make the emotionally wrenching and potentially costly last-minute decision to cancel or postpone a major life celebration they’d put their hearts — and substantial savings — into planning for many months.
Wedding professionals, planners, caterers, DJs and photographers across the Bay Area are reporting that bridal parties have called off or postponed their March and April nuptials. Now they’re waiting to see what happens with May, when wedding season kicks into high gear.
And while they try to help couples make those tough private decisions, these mostly small-business owners also are facing the economic reality. They already are reeling from having many of their corporate and nonprofit clients — their bread and butter — call off conferences, meetings, parties and fundraisers.
“There are so many people this trickles down to,” said Kathryn Kalabokes, who manages the ballroom where Golomb and his wife were to host their reception.
Kalabokes has started to
hear about layoffs at party supply rental companies, and caterers telling chefs, servers and bartenders they won’t have any work for them in the near future.
“These people won’t get paychecks,” Kalabokes said. “This is hitting the events industry very, very hard.”
“We’ve never seen anything like this before,” said Sue Doyle, who runs Denon and Doyle Entertainment with her husband, Brian. The Pacheco-based company provides DJs, lighting, photo booths and other entertainment for weddings, bar mitzvahs and corporate parties. Brian Doyle said they had 12 cancellations in a single day and business was off 75%.
“We had 9/11 when some events were canceled or postponed, but not to this extreme,” Sue Doyle said.
At Carrie Dove Catering in Oakland, owners Adam and Carrie Dove are scrambling with canceled or rescheduled corporate events and weddings, while trying to make sure that the 80 chefs, servers and bartenders
they employ for on-call gigs can collect unemployment. Their job prospects right now are slim, Carrie Dove said.
“It’s just unfortunate,” Adam Dove said. “They have no place else to go. If it was just our business that was slow, they could go work for another catering company. But everyone is affected.”
He and others said their corporate clients have had less hesitation about canceling. They’re making business decisions that don’t carry the emotional weight of a wedding, and it’s not their own money on the line.
Many brides and grooms have tried to adopt a waitand-see approach. But some who had weddings scheduled in late March or in April realized they had to change plans, especially after Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a mandatory ban on gatherings of up to 250 — even if their guest lists fell far below that number.
Other couples had the decision forced on them, when popular municipal and private
venues, including San Francisco’s City Hall, announced they were shutting down for two weeks or more. Couples, including one of the Doyles’ clients, have had to try to reschedule months into the future or scramble to find a new venue, sometimes in a matter of days. That bridal couple learned Thursday night that they couldn’t have their wedding Saturday at the CuriOdyssey museum and animal park in San Mateo.
Then there were couples, like Golomb and his wife, who realized that many guests simply wouldn’t be able to come.
One couple, said San Jose wedding planner Crystal Lequang, stood to lose half the 60-person guest list for their May wedding in Carmel Valley, because many of those guests were coming from China — including from the coronavirusravaged Wuhan province.
The couple finally decided to call off the wedding and possibly reschedule later this year.
“It’s a very tough, emotional
decision,” said Lequang, founder of Amazae Events. “It’s one of those situations where I can’t tell them what they should do. I just have to provide information about what their options are, what the financial implications are.”
Those implications include the likelihood of losing up to 50% of the deposits they’d put down months earlier, and no refunds for services paid in full, if the cancellation comes too close to the wedding date. Given the unprecedented circumstances, many venues and vendors are trying to be flexible about that, especially if the couple agrees to reschedule, Lequang said.
For other couples, financial hardship is less an issue than the realization that it’s hard to feel festive in the midst of a global pandemic.
San Francisco wedding planner Lally Clark said she had just heard from two grooms who had decided to postpone their April 4 wedding in Palm Springs.
“They thought that no
one would want to kiss or hug or dance, which is how you celebrate at weddings,” Clark said. And her clients didn’t want their wedding guests to feel like they had to come, if they felt uncomfortable traveling or being in crowds. They were especially concerned about a groomsman who was recovering from a heart attack and a bridesmaid who is pregnant.
“It was really quite wonderful amidst horribleness, to hear how they were concerned about other people,” Clark said. “It wasn’t about them getting married and being the focus, but about the people who are important being there.”
Golomb and his wife also are trying to keep things in perspective — “It’s just a reception,” Golomb said — and hoping that the pandemic will be brought enough under control that they can fly to Ukraine in June and celebrate with relatives then.