ORGANISING A LUXURY WEDDING IN COVID TIMES
COVID is a harsh reality and weddings are also not immune to its impact. Whether your wedding is set for later this year or you're planning to host a more intimate affair at home in the meantime, it's likely that it will look different as a result of COVID-19.
As a result of the restrictions imposed by the pandemic, wedding planners have to keep in mind various aspects like guest count, safety precautions at the venue, vendor contracts while planning the wedding.
On 15th of June 2020, one of our longstanding clients engaged us to deliver his daughter’s wedding with two weeks to go. Notwithstanding the tight timescale and his desire for an uncompromised setup, it was a unique experience for us during the pandemic to live up to the expectations of a father while ensuring safety of guests, suppliers, and staff at all points. From the usage of PPE kits to weather challenges to design approval, changes, and executions; this Covid times wedding for 50 guests at ITC Grand Bharat surely tops our charts for the most exclusive as well as challenging wedding we have done till date.
The planning and execution of the wedding involved following key steps
1. Creating a detailed SOP document to define processes for safety measures
2. Sharing SOPs with TWD team, vendors and other partners to ensure everyone was on the same page
3. Shared guest safety measures with the client
4. Ensure strong execution on safety measures
We worked with our team and other partners to pull this wedding together in 2 weeks. It required coordination across many dimensions and a lot of standard processes were converted to virtual including, executing designs, and doing diligences on quality, explaining nuances and details to vendors for various elements. We were forced to expand our local knowledge on what is available in states without flying people from out of Delhi.
With our experience of a COVID wedding, we highly recommend following measures to be kept in mind while organising a wedding:
Understand Vendor Contracts: If you’re booking a venue or catering for an upcoming wedding or event, make sure you understand their policies. It’s important to work with vendors and venues which are flexible and also provide clarity on costs related to postponing or canceling the wedding. It’s also important to understand what venues are allowed to do and what measures they are taking to keep their guests safe.
Design with what’s Available: We will likely to see restrictions or constraints on vendor’s ability to deliver on wedding design (florals, installations etc.). Make sure you work with your planner to create practical wedding themes which can be executed in the “new normal”
Keep Safety a Priority: We will need to continue to follow guidelines of basic human hygiene, which means washing our hands and/or using hand sanitizer every time we shake hands, touch elevator buttons, open a door, etc. and avoiding touching our faces especially when we’re in public places.
As we work with clients to plan weddings this year, we advise them to take extra precaution and ask those staff members showing signs of illness to stay home and to place hand sanitizers, sanitizing stations, thermometer scans etc. at entrances to buffets, food stations, and rooms to ensure that we provide a safe wedding experience to our clients.
At Theme Weavers Designs, we continue to work with clients to help them manage their wedding planning process if their wedding is set later for this year or if they are planning to host a more intimate affair at home. We are keeping health & safety a priority. Be Safe.