In the midst of the COVID-19 crisis, wedding businesses are forced to switch gears due to shelter-in-place lockdowns. Approximately 95%of spring weddings have been cancelled during what was supposed to be the busiest season of the year.
À Votre Service Events, a wedding and floral planning agency in New York, has been affected by the rapid changes that unfolded this month. “Initially, it appeared that larger corporate events and conferences, especially those that included travel, would be impacted. But then as the virus continued to spread, weddings had to be downsized from 250 to 50 to 10, and now we’re at a ‘shelter-in-place’ scenario,” said the founder Marie Danielle Vil-Young in a recent interview with Forbes.
Meanwhile, engaged couples are also having to adapt to the new situation. Many have cancelled or rescheduled their big day, but Jera Bean and Aaron Cook decided to live stream their Central Park wedding. “We broadcasted the entire wedding through IG Live so that all of our friends, family, and Insta community across the world could attend,” Jenna shared on her Instagram page.
How Wedding Businesses Are Adapting
Couples aren’t the only ones taking their affairs online. Vil-Young has changed her direction and is working to offer her goods and services through an e-commerce site. She also plans to add a new line of edible, organic floral products to help support the floral industry and farms.
“I’m not pausing anything in my business, even though things are paused,” says Eddie Zaratsian, an events designer based in Los Angeles. In a 50-minute webinar with Kevin Dennis from the Wedding International Professionals Association (WIPA), Zaratsian explains that he is focusing his efforts inward, working on marketing, SEO, and adding new materials to his online course. “As a smart businessman, you can’t put all your eggs in one basket.”
What You Can Do
In the middle of a crisis, it may feel like there’s no room to even think about refocussing your energy or rebranding your business. But everything is temporary, even this pandemic. Here are a few things you can focus on to reinvent your product line if you are in the wedding industry.
- Repurpose your products. If you get creative, there’s a lot of ways to reinvent wedding products. Wedding favors can be turned into small comfort packages and some Etsy sellers are even creating “wedding cancellation gifts” that guests can send as a condolence to couples who had to cancel their wedding. This would work great with personalized Mr. and Mrs. products.
- Market your products as Christmas gifts. A lot of shoppers are trying to support small businesses by doing their Christmas shopping early. Can you repurpose your wedding favors as “early stocking stuffers?” Or can you market your personalized items as future Christmas gifts to couples? This would work great with personalized Mr. and Mrs. products. Some of your personalized items could even be sold to other target markets if you changed the wording on the items.
- Look for ways to help brides reschedule their big day. Staying in touch with your audience is important. Is there any way that you or your products can assist disappointed future-brides? A to-do checklist? A graphic template that they can send to their guest list with details about the new schedule? You can easily create graphics like this for free with Canva.
- If your products allow, photograph them in non-wedding staging to see if you can appeal to a new target audience. This would work well for products like jewelry and personalized items. Who knows, maybe you’ll find a whole new niche for your business!
Amidst the lockdown, we can still be active and engaged in our business and work towards recovering stronger and faster.
“A few customers are still planning future events and weddings,” Kim Hawkins, president of EventsWholesale.com, told Forbes. “We are taking this downtime as an opportunity to update our products and add new products for the future. Hopefully, life will resume as normal soon, and our customers will be planning ‘coming out of quarantine’ parties in the near future!”
