Wedding vendors get creative to generate business amid pandemic

In the face of a worldwide pandemic, brides and grooms have had to focus less on large lavish gatherings, choreographed wedding party dances, bouquet tosses, buffets and ordering drinks at the bars.

Instead, they’re rescheduling, cutting guest lists or remaking their original plans for their special days.

The settings for weddings that do take place are now intimate backyards, or tents and pavilions at their venues; the guests are a handful of close family members and friends — no more than 50 if the event is outside.

While the myriad changes in regulations since COVID-19 hit have hurt the hospitality industry, many said they’re facing 2021 with a scant number of potential wedding dates left and they're hoping to regain some of the footing lost in 2020.

“We were over $500,000 down between weddings and (golf) tournaments,” said Melissa Laskowski, the functions coordinator at Blissful Meadows in Uxbridge. “But we have a good golf revenue and that’s keeping us going. I feel bad for these places that don’t have anything else.”

While some wedding venues may be forced out of business, Laskowski said creativity will keep others alive.

She and Connie Pion, the director of sales at The Publick House in Sturbridge, said they’ve seen very few bridezillas and more couples taking things in stride as they navigate how to get married and follow the rules.

Both women said they’ve been amenable to making changes, offering new dates and suggesting alternatives to the wedding packages they normally offer.

“We’ve seen them play bride and groom trivia games or outside activities like corn hole,” to fill the time that would’ve otherwise been used for dancing and socializing, Pion said.

Pion said The Publick House didn’t just suffer losses from the weddings, but the related services they offer for bridal parties such as hair and nails and a suite of hotel rooms, were also shut down for a time.

The women said they’ve needed more staff than usual to work during events even though weddings have fewer in attendance. That’s because guests, under regulations set by Gov. Charlie Baker, can’t even walk to the bar for a drink. Buffets and carving stations are a no-no and candy and cupcake bars or doughnut walls are off limits, too.

So servers are doing far more: fetching drinks, doling out cupcakes and, as Laskowski said, “basically treating the wedding guests like kings and queens.”

As facilities reopened and small weddings began to happen, there were the things no one thought about that had to be addressed. Salt and pepper shakers can’t be passed around the table, Pion said.

So at The Publick House, there are individual shakers at each place setting. Laskowski said she’s opted for paper packets for some condiments. There were hand sanitizing stations and signage and reconfigured routes to restrooms.

The women said they’re hosting several weddings this year and many dates in 2021 have been claimed by the 2020 couples who’ve rescheduled. Newly engaged couples will probably be best trying to book now for 2022, they said.

No matter how big or small, though, most couples still want to capture their special day in pictures and while many have rescheduled, Leicester-based photographer Joe Dolen said he’s still been photographing brides and grooms at small backyard weddings.

“I normally do 35 to 40 weddings a year,” he said, adding that 2021 is already looking busy. “I don’t think I’ll do 80 but it’ll be in the 50s.”

He talks with other wedding vendors and said it hasn’t been easy for any of them.

“It’s definitely surreal,” he said. “I wouldn’t have imagined I’d be here doing this last year.”

But the smaller weddings have also given him creative license and the time to capture moments he might not normally catch. With just 50 guests at outdoor weddings, he can take a few moments with each guest or couple and include them all in his photos. He shoots folks wearing masks and other signs of the times.

He’s also charged a “suggested price” for the scaled back weddings if the couple plans to hire him for the bigger party down the road.

“They’ve had a lot of heartache,” he said of the decision to reduce the price for smaller events.

The same is true for Greg Bedard, a DJ from Auburn who specializes in weddings. Even a small wedding needs music, he said. No one wants to walk down the aisle in silence or eat dinner without quiet background music, he said. Plus, a microphone is always needed for toasts and even for the ceremony — he can provide that and even sanitizes the microphone for multiple toasts.

Bedard said the COVID-19 regulations, “Basically shut down the business for the summer.” It hurt but he spent time teaching his kids the things fathers think they should know, like how to fix their cars. His dad and kids pitched in and built a shed, too, he said.

He’s adapted to the changes but draws the line at hosting games at weddings. He said he hasn’t introduced a wedding party since March because the smaller events don’t lend themselves to that.

When Sean Maher and Charlie Pietrello locked the doors at La Jolie Fleur back in March following COVID-19 rules, there weren’t many blooms left to wilt in their flower shop.

Maher said they’d anticipated a shutdown and started ordering smaller numbers of flowers with more frequent deliveries, just in case they were right.

With the shop shuttered, they missed the walk-in customers who, on the way past their shop on Southbridge Street in Worcester, would pop in for some flowers to brighten someone’s day.

Maher said they essentially “wrote off” Mothers’ Day despite a last-minute order that would’ve allowed curbside pickup and when they were finally able to reopen they embraced social media, online ordering, and payment and curbside service because social distancing would be tough in their shop.

They weren’t seeing customers in person, Maher said, but their floral business, like all floral businesses, continued to provide items folks need during some of the most emotional moments in their lives. While there’s generally a balance of happy and sad events, during the height of the pandemic it was far more sadness than joy.

“I do some of the delivery driving and sometimes, three times a day we would be going to funeral homes and we would see the chairs spaced out … sometimes there were 10 funerals in a day (from COVID-19 and other reasons),” he said. “It was such an emotional thing.”

Now, though, couples are calling, weddings, even “micro-weddings” for 2020, are being planned over the phone, and the balance is returning, Maher said.

Maher came to the U.S. from South Wales for schooling, got his citizenship and eventually met and married Pietrello. He said he is hopeful for their business and those of others who work in the hospitality industry financially impacted by the virus.

Still, he and others in the industry said that while earning money is important, they believe they will, for a long time, be taking precautions to protect their employees who’ve faithfully showed up to work through it all.