Pandemic pivot

feature: Pandemic pivot

HOW SEA TO SKY WEDDING VENDORS CONTINUE TO SUPPORT COUPLES IN 2021 AND BEYOND

LEAH KATHRYN PHOTOGRAPHY

by: ALYSSA NOEL

While COVID-19 has decimated much of B.C.’s wedding industry over the last year, there’s one trend that’s emerged as a result: epic elopements.

Whether couples chose a spot tucked away in the lush, green rain forests of Squamish, took a chopper to a remote Whistler mountain top, snowmobiled to a Pemberton ice cave, adventure—and love— still won the day.

Officiating many of those stunning nuptials was Jeremy Postal, who you will find on the internet as The Whistler Wedding Pastor.

“My experience has been a little different from other vendors in the sense that pretty much every other vendor is expendable to a wedding—except the officiant,” he said. “They still need that core group of vendors: photography, somewhere to do the wedding, whoever is going to legalize it.”

While Postal did see an initial drop off when the pandemic first hit in spring 2020, by the end of the year, the number of weddings he attended was about the same as

PHOTOS BY LOGAN SWAYZE Val St-Arnaud of Calling Mountains Productions

a regular year.

That could be because, even before coronavirus, he had chosen elopements as his speciality. “Suddenly, my market grew,” he said. ‘Whistler provides so many unique options. We have so many worldclass experiences. We can tag onto our experiences. One wedding we did last week was with Headline Mountain Holidays and Blackcomb Helicopters. We flew to the Pemberton Ice Cap and snowmobiled up to the ice caves. That is a pretty unique experience. It takes a special kind of couple to do that sort of thing.”

A report released this spring from hellosafe.ca, a platform that compares Canadian insurance companies, estimated the province’s financial loss in the wedding industry to be more than $158 million. Making matters worse, pre-pandemic, in February 2020 revenue was up a whopping 40.9 per cent from 2019.

In Whistler, there were 56 weddings celebrated in January and February 2020 and just 30 weddings in the same months this year, accounting for a 46.43 per cent decrease. (Pemberton was not included in the report.)

However, it’s not all bad news. Both the report and local vendors are anticipating 2022 to busier than ever for weddings with engaged couples from 2020 and beyond vying for their dream events.

“The last few weeks, I’ve been getting more and more inquiries for 2022,” says Carlee Cindric, a wedding and event planner and owner of Pocketful Productions. “People are getting engaged, vaccines are rolling out, people are starting to feel confident about 2022.”

Her advice for couples planning for next year: move quickly, and be open to mid-week weddings.

“For couples looking to get married, there are [a few] things they need to tick off their list sooner: the date, venue, photographer, and/or videographer, their wedding officiant and wedding planner—whether it’s the day of or full service. Those are the people that are going to fill up the fastest,” Cindric said.

Calling Mountains Productions, a Sea to Sky videography company, has seen their business grow during the pandemic. Early on, they started offering livestreaming services and added a drone to the mix.

“When everything shut down it was a good time for us to train more and figure out what we needed to do,” said Valerie StArnaud, founder and owner of the company. “For us, we’ve been really lucky. We’re the one service people are like, ‘Now that I can’t have people at my wedding, we need video.’”

While bookings were on the upswing in 2020, they’re poised to be even busier in 2021.

“I would say 80 to 85 per cent of our clients are elopements,” St-Arnaud added. “Before it was full-day weddings.”

Part of the appeal of video is capturing your big day to share with loved ones who couldn’t attend. However, now that couples have had a taste of the keepsake video offers, it seems likely the medium’s popularity will stick around after big parties are back on the table.

“I’m very cinematic and I will apply different techniques based on the couple’s vibe and the way it’s going,” St-Arnaud said. “It’s about the views and everything, yes—I realized the drone is super important in that as well—but I like to build a story.”