THE COVID-19 pandemic has decimated several industries, resulting in many persons being displaced from their jobs and leaving business owners with millions of dollars in losses.
The wedding industry, in particular, is among the industries hit the hardest, since public gatherings were halted and weddings can only have a limited number of people.

Globally, the wedding industry grosses over US$300 billion yearly; this takes into consideration dress makers, caterers, banquet halls, and even interior decorators.
With the national COVID-19 guidelines prohibiting large gatherings since the beginning of the pandemic here in March, several persons have had to reduce the magnitude of their big day or postpone it all together.
The guidelines specifically restrict persons from attending a banquet hall or a reception but noted that if there is a religious event, no more than ten persons shall attend.

The Sunday Chronicle reached out to several businesses in the wedding industry to find out how they have managed to survive.
The owners of the Impeccable Banquet Hall, Clive and Vanessa Sampson, described the period as “devastating.” Since the pandemic, they have been unable to book any weddings and approximately 60 of their employees have been displaced.

“COVID has devastated us; from March to now, we have not done anything at all. In the meantime, you still have salaries to pay, so you’re paying out money but nothing is coming in. We are going in our pockets to maintain overalls when you take into consideration electricity and all of that,” said Mr. Sampson.
The new wedding season has commenced and the Impeccable Banquet Hall managed to get a few bookings but several persons have since cancelled and had to be refunded.

The Sampsons explained that while they received permission to host and facilitate events on the ground floor of the building, the national COVID-19 task force refused to grant them permission to host any events on the top floor, which is the main attraction of the business.

“They had given us permission to open up downstairs, which we are grateful for. We asked the COVID taskforce to come and look at our place to grant us approval for upstairs. We told them the [air conditioning units] would not be in use, the windows would be opened and we would set up seating arrangements in a way that would provide for social distancing, but we got a big ‘no’. But we are trying, we are trying to rehire persons and so on but it’s hard,” Mr Sampson related.

He believes that the task force and the Ministry of Health should facilitate conversations with persons in the wedding industry in an effort to come up with sustainable solutions.
Meanwhile, Amanda’s Bridal, which supplies wedding materials, is also suffering as a result of the pandemic.
The company’s Operations Manager, Elisa Singh, stated that purchasing in the wedding section has seen a steep decline, and does not seem to be picking up even though the second wedding season of the year has begun.

“On a scale from 0-10, in purchasing, we are like at a four, and at this point in the year, we would have already seen a surge in persons buying wedding dresses, suits, shoes and so on because a lot of weddings happen between the June to August, and coming down to November – December would have been the second wedding season, but we haven’t seen anything like that,” Singh explained.

She further stated that while the business saw some persons purchasing wedding dresses at the beginning of the year, many made the difficult decision of postponing their wedding and returning their dresses, causing the company to issue hundreds of thousands of dollars in refunds.

“And during this time, normally there are even persons coming in when we have our sales and purchase their dress one time for next year, but so far, we aren’t seeing any of the normal activity because nobody knows what next year would bring,” said Singh.

WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN
Co-founder of RED entertainment, Kristina King, stated that while her company has worked to adapt to the new mode of operations, the first eight months of the pandemic negatively impacted her business.
King said that the pandemic took the event-planning and entertainment company by surprise and turned her world upside down.

“Eight months ago, the silence from our email and social media inboxes was deafening, to say the least. Months passed by and we didn’t receive our usual influx of quotation requests for weddings and other special occasion events. And the events that were previously booked, were postponed, reduced in guest count, or cancelled,” King stated.

She said, however, that although the pandemic has posed some level of threat, the company was fortunate enough to come up with several innovative techniques and solutions.
“Even though COVID-19 has posed numerous challenges, it has also stimulated our ability to adapt and create new and exciting ideas and operating systems that will benefit our company and those that hire us for years to come,” King said.

The company has been working to ensure that it creates several other avenues to provide for the cost of paying employees. King said the impact of COVID forced the company to put event-planning and entertainment on the back burner and move to offer marketing services.