By Paula Baroff
Pandemic Party Planning
With the events industry on hold, Atlanta’s Jewish event planners worked closely with each other to plan for the next era of lifecycle, corporate and social events. Melissa Miller of MMEvents Atlanta said most of her social events – weddings, b’nai mitzvah, and other types of parties – have been postponed, while every corporate event has been canceled. “Important milestone events people are always going to want to have,” she said. She said rescheduling soon would be difficult because synagogues remain closed. This has caused families to become creative in planning their events. She said there are a number of options available. “Some of my clients are doing their ‘Zoom Mitzvahs’ and postponing their parties. Some of my clients are doing Zoom weddings and then postponing their big party. Some of them are getting married twice,” Miller said. “I had a client who did a Zoom wedding last week and they’re doing the whole thing over again in a year. Some clients are doing the
Zoom Mitzvah and doing a really small party. A planner can help make these parties really great with some creativity. An open house in a backyard for example is great for social distancing.” Large events, like weddings and b’nai mitzvah, require a lot of details and planning to keep in mind when postponing. It is not uncommon to book vendors and venues a year or even several years in advance, which means people will need to call each vendor to reschedule around their calendars. “I will tell you this: the vendors have all been really accommodating in helping people postpone their parties,” Miller said. For those who choose to go ahead with their events on the scheduled date, they won’t won’t look the same as they would during normal times. Still, it is possible to work within CDC guidelines, she said. Guests may need to wear masks, or have their temperatures taken. Miller described a bar mitzvah she planned in March where guests socially distanced. They only seated around 4-6 people per table, and mostly by family. At an earlier event she did that serves as a blueprint for cre-
ative socially distant events, only four people were seated at a table. “Reconfiguring the typical banquet tables might look different now,” she said. EB Catering Co. recently served an outdoor wedding with acrylic walls in front of the food to keep both guests and workers protected. “It was actually my creation and my idea,” said owner Eli Brafman. He worked with a famous company called Eastern Tabletop. “They basically make high-end, innovative systems for caterers. I got them to build me a 6-foot-by-6-foot acrylic partition.” He had chef attendant stations set up with the acrylic wall in the front, with a cut-out to pass a plate of food through the partition to guests. Even with the possibility of holding a small event with safety precautions, most people have chosen to reschedule for a later date. Though the situation is fluid, as of now, Governor Brian Kemp has loosened state regulations limiting the size of events. “My heart breaks for them, a bride who wants to have all of her 300 friends come to her wedding, friends and family that maybe
can’t travel from other countries,” Miller said. Event planner Terry Saxe, who runs Terry Saxe Events, LLC, also said most of her clients have postponed, not canceled. She said it’s difficult because clients aren’t usually open to adjusting how their weddings look. “Every bride wants to go down the aisle with her family and with all 200 people watching her,” she said. “They want to just have the party next year.” Rebooking has been a challenge, since people don’t really know when it will be safe to hold a large wedding again, she said. This has upended the events industry. “For us as planners, our whole industry I think was hit the hardest. … We just had to kind of shut down and then try to repivot ourselves.” Saxe said the guidelines for the hospitality industry have been unclear, so they’ve worked hard to adapt recommendations to fit their needs. “We’re taking some of the restaurant guidelines and trying to adapt them to our own and put a lot of our own security measures in place so we aren’t liable and aren’t doing anything that’s
This intimate destination wedding for 30 guests planned by Saxe could serve as a blueprint for smaller events in the next year.
ATLANTA JEWISH TIMES
STYLE MAGAZINE • 18
