Coronavirus and Wedding Planning
How Approach the Covid-19 Impact on the Event Industry
This is an article published on linkedin by Andrea Eppolito, which we share with our audience both for its value and for being aligned with its content, we hope you enjoy it.
Last week I published a podcast and a YouTube video about the novel Coronavirus and the way in which my business was approaching it. My position and advice to engaged couples was to stay calm, wash your hands often, and proceed with common sense. My advice to wedding professionals was the same, with an added caveat suggesting that we all work towards finding innovative solutions to the new problems that our clients would be facing.
In 48 hours the world changed dramatically. First, with Nevada declaring a State of Emergency, and then the country following suit. Suddenly, we are facing massive shutdowns in the hospitality industry. Flights are canceled, restaurants are closed, and the level of fear and panic has taken the general public to a place that I have not seen in my lifetime.
My heart goes out to all of the couples and clients faced with the reality that their celebrations can no longer happen the way in which they dreamed of them. I love the optimism of those who are choosing to move forward and respect the concerns that others have who need to postpone.
I am deeply moved by and concerned for all of the businesses that are being impacted, and I feel absolutely horrible for the front line employees that are losing their jobs. Waitstaff, valets, banquet captains, cooks and chefs are all in compromised positions. The economy is unstable, the stores are empty, and people are fighting with one another over toilet paper as they try to practice social distancing. We look to the media for information and instead find politics and panic.
Which begs the question: Where do I stand now?
Exactly where I did last week. I fully acknowledge that we are in an unprecedented situation, the likes of which I have never seen in my lifetime. And yet I look back over the collective human experience and the things that we have lived through. As a nation, we have survived the Cold War, 9-11, the Crash of 2008, H1N1, and Ebola. Individually, we each have had our own trials and tribulations, but here we are. Different from how we once were and forever changed, but here.
None of us know what the future will hold, and it is for that reason that I wholly go back to my Why. When bad things happen, and they always happen, we need good things to look forward to and look back on. Some people think it is frivolous to celebrate now. I believe the opposite. How we come together, what we celebrate, and the stories we tell define our humanity. They are the benchmarks of our legacy, and the thing that connect one generation to the next.
Today, right now, we need to be both calm and vigilant. Use common sense, wash your hands, and maintain whatever lifestyle you need to in order to be mentally comfortable.
Economically, seek out ways to support local businesses. The goal is not to cancel weddings and events, but to postpone them and execute them with innovative ideas that will allow us all to gather in new and meaningful ways. Internally, we are working on unique seating arrangements to increase the distance between guests, adding hand wash stations to the main space, and adding another layer of sanitation to all surfaces. We are deploying the use of 360 degree cameras to broadcast weddings to older guests who may not be able to attend in person, and working with our tech teams on virtual experiences and live streaming.
Emotionally, remember that life is worth living because we have each other. The relationships we have, the memories we make, and the promise of the future is what sustains us. As much as I would hope that it isn’t so, Covid-19 is going to change us all irrevocably. Ultimately, however, we will continue to come together. We will celebrate, congregate, and live our lives because that’s what we do
And when you are ready to come back into the world and celebrate again, I will be here.
The original article can be found at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/coronavirus-wedding-planning-how-i-approach-covid-19-impact-eppolito/
