Wedding industry calls on BC government for reopening plan
Several wedding and event industry professionals are calling on the BC government to relax COVID-19 restrictions around nuptials and give businesses in the sector more support.
Paige Petriw of Spotlight Events posted the open letter on her website this week, alleging the wedding industry has been ignored in COVID-19 planning despite it being a $1.2 billion per year industry.
“When weddings and events are shut down, the impact on our industry extends six to 12 months minimum beyond the lockdown period,” Petriw wrote. “We cannot reopen and close overnight like a restaurant or gym. The average loss of revenue across our industry has been 70%-90% consistently since March 2020.”
She pointed to flip-flopping gathering restrictions as being a major challenge to the industry.
Under BC’s current COVID-19 restrictions, indoor organized gatherings of any kind are not allowed. That includes wedding and funeral receptions.
Petriw is asking the BC government to come up with ways to allow weddings to proceed — and is open to having certain restrictions in place such as attendance limits.
Wedding services that happen inside a faith centre (such as a church or synagogue) are not affected by current restrictions, a BC Government spokesperson told Daily Hive.
Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry addressed the restrictions at her January 25 COVID-19 update.
“I just want to clarify weddings and funeral services are not restricted. It is the celebrations, the parties afterwards. We know that, invariably, those are the settings we are seeing transmission. Not every single one, clearly. But at many. It’s very challenging,” Henry said.
Petriw acknowledges risks exist whenever people gather indoors, but she’s asking for appropriate restrictions to be implemented so that receptions can go ahead in a modified way.
“We are asking to operate professionally managed indoor events and gatherings under specific guidelines and restrictions,” she wrote.
Many wedding vendors have also chimed in, saying they want to see clear reopening targets after everything industry professionals have sacrificed.
“The majority of the wedding businesses in British Columbia will not survive another cancelled wedding season,” Dream Group Planners wrote on Instagram. “We need a reopening plan now so we can help our clients prepare accordingly and prevent premature cancellations.”
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“We want answers,” Sweetheart Events said on Instagram. “We have proved ourselves time and time again to create safe events, and we deserve to work again.”
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Many other industry workers are sharing their thoughts via the #reopenbcweddings hashtag on Instagram.
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