Postponements and cancellations won’t stop couples from tying the knot

By Michael Boriero, Local Journalism Initiative ­Reporter

There will be no packed churches or wedding bells this summer. No celebration afterwards featuring Jay-Z, Beyoncé, and the Backstreet Boys. No special moment between bride and groom as they gaze into each others eyes in front of hundreds of tearful friends and family.
This is the reality that many engaged couples have come to grips with over the last several months. Weddings set for the summer are now being postponed to next year or cancelled outright.
But it didn’t happen all at once, or right at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Rachel Cripps-Gervais, owner of the luxury lifestyle weddings company, An English Rose. Her clients kept delaying the inevitable, but eventually it was like a domino effect.
“It kind of happened in a sequence for me, they didn’t all cancel at the same time,” said Cripps-Gervais. “Everybody was kind of waiting and listening and trying to figure out whether it was still going to be possible.”
Once couples realized the gravity of the situation surrounding the novel coronavirus, they had to pull the plug on a once-in-a-lifetime event they spent months, even years, planning. Although Quebec is slowing ­reopening, a physically distanced wedding makes no sense, she explained.
Cripps-Gervais said she has been honest with her clients from the beginning. Weddings, and any large gatherings, aren’t in the cards for anyone this summer, and likely for the rest of the year, she continued.
But that isn’t necessarily a bad thing, according to the veteran wedding planner. Now that the summer has been written off, couples can start focusing on the positives and worry less about scrambling to get a wedding together under strict pandemic rules.
“They can relax, they have a new date, they’re not stressing about ‘what, if, maybe, perhaps’ and they’ve got another year to enjoy being engaged, enjoy the planning, maybe saving more money towards their weddings or honeymoons,” she said.
Cassondra McCrory, a client with An English Rose, was supposed to get married on June 20 in Brome Lake. She put off postponing her wedding for as long as she could, but when one of her vendors called to warn her that another couple was looking to book the same weekend in 2021, it prompted her to take action.
“We realized that if we didn’t make a decision sooner rather than later we would probably end up in a situation where all of our vendors weren’t aligning and then you end up with conflicts in schedule,” McCrory said.
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