Veil & Vow | The Berkshire Eagle • 5
Saturday, January 30, 2021
The Big Day, revised COVID-19 restrictions spur couples and wedding professionals to adjust expectations and get creative By Kimberly Kirchner Part of pulling off a successful wedding is being prepared for everything to go wrong. Bad weather, unexpected guests, a groomsman with the stomach flu, a flower girl with stage fright are all entries on a long list of problems wedding planners are ready to address at a moment’s notice. Notably absent: a viral pandemic that shuts down social gatherings and offers no hint at an end date. In the long months since the phrase “social distancing” first entered our everyday vocabulary, more and more couples have had to confront the reality that their carefully orchestrated weddings simply can’t go on as planned. The many businesses making up the wedding industry, from caterers and florists to venues and deejays, have had to develop new products and services to keep revenue flowing. But love, as they say, finds a way, and both wedding pros and would-be-weds have
made the best of a bleak situation with optimism, ingenuity and plenty of patience.
To wait, or to wed Even with the logistical challenges and uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic, few couples have given up entirely on holding some sort of wedding celebration. According to a survey by The Wedding Report, a research company covering the wedding industry, only 7% of couples who had planned to marry in 2020 had called off the event entirely, as of June 30. In the same time period, 41.5% of couples had postponed their wedding to 2021 or later, while a surprising 30.5% still planned to marry on their original date — a percentage that has certainly gone down as the pandemic stretched through the fall and into 2021. Oskar Hallig, president of South Egremont-based Only in My Dreams Events, has seen clients tackle the issue in a variety of ways. Some stuck to their original wedding
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