Victoria Femia
The Okanagan wedding and event planning industry is expecting a busy year now that restrictions have been lifted and indoor venues can operate at full capacity.
Restaurants, bars and nightclubs can now fully reopen with no capacity limits, while indoor and outdoor organized gatherings like weddings can resume after ordered cancellations.
Owner of the Tickle Trunk and TTM Events, Hal Puder, says since the announcement was made on Tuesday, the wedding and event bookings have been non-stop.
“This year, the weddings have just all of a sudden opened way up, our corporate business opened way up, within a week we just started getting bookings, everybody who was holding off is now going forward, for bigger weddings,” said Puder.
It was a similar situation for Kelowna DJ, Pat Galley, who says he already has over 40 wedding bookings this year, 14 of them just in July.
“As it is right now, you have to wear a mask, but at least you can mingle and there’s no capacity limits, so you don’t have to try and figure out how to fit 40 of your 180 guests into your wedding,” said Galley.
“This year looks very very promising.”
Puder said his event and wedding business took a hit over the last two years, since that brings in about 60% of volume in sales for him.
“When that all got cancelled, within a month (the events) were all gone,” said Puder.
Puder was fortunate to have the balloon and party side of his business, the Tickle Trunk, which he said helped bring in revenue.
Galley was hit with a number of wedding cancellations last year.
“Last year, all the weddings that we had booked for April, May and June had all been canceled… I couldn’t even tell you the amount of weddings I had canceled,” said Galley.
Over the last couple of years, Puder said the micro-wedding trend has become very popular, and believes it’s not going anywhere.
“People started liking the idea of having a wedding under 50 people, it was a lot more intimate, they could meet everybody and of course they could have the wedding of their dreams because now they could afford to have either nicer things, or they could save some money,” said Puder.