🔒Highly engaged: Surging demand keeps Maine wedding vendors busy, fuels recovery hopes

The marriage business is no longer on the rocks. “I thought I was going to have a mellow winter and spring, but 2021 was bananas and 2022 is crazy and I haven’t had a minute to breathe,” says Meghan Carey, a Portland-based wedding-invitation designer who’s already had 13 clients since starting her business last fall.

With more than 2.5 million U.S. weddings expected this year after COVID’s losses and disruptions, vendors in Maine from events companies to planners have their hands full.

“Everybody keeps calling this a boom year. This is not a boom year — this is a recovery year,” says Fausto Pifferrer, co-founder of Blue Elephant Events & Catering in Saco. “We’re still putting in the pavement to fix the cracks, and I think we’ll see a recovery of the industry in 2023 and 2024 if we don’t get hit with a recession.”

While Goldman Sachs economists have put a 35% probability on a U.S. recession next year and cut growth forecasts amid soaring oil prices and other fallout from the war in Ukraine, an estimated 2.6 million weddings are forecast to take place in the United States this year, according to a report by wedding-planning website the Knot. The forecast, issued in February, compares to a 2.2 million yearly average pre-pandemic. Guest numbers are also projected to be higher this year, on par with the 2019 average of 131, while the estimated ceremony and reception price tag is seen staying steady at $27,000.

While making a more conservative projection of 2.47 million U.S. weddings this year, the Tucson, Ariz.-based Wedding Report predicts that after 2023, things should start to normalize with a return to the pre-pandemic number of weddings and spending. In Maine, couples spent an average $20,898 to tie the knot in 2021, the highest in five years, Wedding Report data show.

A sector in flux

In 2017 Maine recorded 10,188 weddings, and couples and their guests contributed an estimated $937 million to the state’s economy, according to a May 2019 report by the Maine Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Southern Maine.

In 2020, the first year of the pandemic, the number of weddings dropped to 7,865. That includes an East Millinocket wedding that August linked to 177 coronavirus infections and seven deaths. Besides hurting Maine’s hitherto status as a safe haven from COVID, headlines and stories in national media were bad PR for the state’s whole events industry.

“It was really hard to get in front of that because everybody loves a good scary tale,” says Blue Elephant co-founder Reuben Bell, who is also the editor of Real Maine Weddings magazine. “The venue did all the things correctly, but the client refused to comply.”

That same year, Bell and Pifferrer — who are married to each other — organized a campaign encouraging couples to postpone rather than cancel their occasions. Joined by around 30 other business owners, they released a promotional video that went viral and a composite group photo shared on social media using the hashtag #postponedontcancel that gained nationwide traction.

“It kept us alive and kept us in touch with the governor’s office,” Pifferer recalls. Bell adds that “once everybody got on board with the idea, the clients understand that we are all small businesses, and we can’t give you all your money back if you cancel or we’ll all go broke.”

That didn’t happen to Blue Elephant, which handled 25 weddings in 2020, including two receptions — different guests — in one day for one couple at Ocean Gateway in Portland during indoor gathering limits.

This year, the events company will handle two to three weddings every weekend between early May and mid-December, compared to a pre-pandemic average of around four to five every weekend. The company employs 10 people full-time but goes as high as 100 to 150 with summer hires on a per diem basis. The company has also had to raise prices this year by more than 20% to cover increased costs for food and staffing.

“We could easily book four to five weddings a weekend right now,” Bell says. “The clients are there, we’re just not wanting to overextend the staff that we have.”

‘Maxed out’ vendors and venues

Other vendors are equally stretched to the limits. One example is Claire Winston-Wade, a Portland-based officiator scheduled to perform 27 ceremonies this year, of which four are postponements.

“I would like to stop there but I know I’m going to get last-minute bookings, and I’m going to take them, because people are really stuck, and I don’t like to turn them away,” says Winston-Wade, who charges $1,000 and up for weddings and $500 and higher for elopements, which she defines as ceremonies of 12 or fewer guests.

She had 18 bookings in 2021 and seven in 2020, when some couples in a hurry even came to her place for ceremonies though she normally travels all over the state.

“I was doing weddings off my back porch,” she recalls, laughing. “I felt like Moses up there.”

While that didn’t work for clients from out of state who make up 80% of her business, during the pandemic she did Zoom consultations for the first time. Ancillary services include helping couples prepare for death as well as Native American aura-cleansing rituals called smudgings.

Committed to her core business in weddings, she says, “We are a safe, stable, solid industry, and people will always get married. We have that in our back pocket.”

A barn with atmosphere

Wedding venues have also adapted to changing times. One example is Caswell Farm & Wedding Barn in Gray, where owner Catherine Caswell recently added a garden ceremony space and is currently working on refurbishing the barn interior and adding a suite where couples can stay.

“I’m upping the property’s game,” says Caswell, who raised prices at the end of 2021 to include the setup and breakdown services for tables and chairs.

In 2020 when weddings were off the table, she opened a farm stand on her property and started doing outdoor distanced events peddling pizza and other food, meeting some neighbors for the first time after 15 years in business.

“We were really blown away and I really loved how that felt,” the Alaska native says. The business has also added workshops, covering topics from soil to flower arranging, as it juggles 32 weddings booked for this year — including some on weekdays.

Couples from out of state unable to visit the space before booking can view videos and then meet with Caswell and her executive chef over Zoom. For 2023, there are already five bookings from clients who’ve never been on site.

“I am curious if that is a trend,” says Caswell, who employs around 30 people during the season and notes she hasn’t had any staffing challenges. “These couples know they don’t have the time to wait, to come visit, and they know what’s happening without seeing the space.”

Another trend is that while couples used to book eight months to a year before the big day, they’re now booking a year to 18 months out — leaving few 2023 dates left.

Another venue, Migis Lodge on Sebago Lake, will host 16 weddings this year, within its usual range, after raising prices to cover the cost of labor and goods, according to Maddy Abbott, assistant general manager and sales and events manager. A reception alone at the South Casco resort costs around $160 to $200 per person plus a tax and service charge.

“We have not made not a crazy change, but significant enough that clients do notice that we’re one of the more expensive venues,” she says. COVID “was a huge derailment for a lot of people, but it’s nice to be back to normal.”

And in Cape Neddick in York, Walkers Maine restaurant is set for one wedding a weekend from May to October with a new mobile kitchen that makes it easier to cater large events, says co-owner and sommelier Danielle Johnson Walker.

“Many in this industry are still not out of the woods,” she says, “and need to make the best of the upcoming season to make up for lost time in 2020 and 2021.”

Flowers and fonts

Maine wedding vendors with their hands full include florist Robin Samalus Getchel, who opened the Robin’s Nest store in Waterville in 2018 and recently expanded to a much larger space at 173 Main St.

“Last year I did 25 weddings and will certainly do as many again this year and probably more,” she predicts. That doesn’t include elopements, which she says can be as simple as a customer coming in a day before a City Hall ceremony.

“For me, almost every single week we’ve had that happen for the last month. We’re doing a lot of that,” she says.

While pricing flowers a year in advance depends on weather and supply, she says that using the average cost over the last few years works well. She also says she can easily offer alternatives when there are supply shortages and that customers are flexible, with continued demand for natural-look bouquets with lots of white and off-white blossoms.

“That’s still what a lot of people are looking for, but they’re spending more money,” she says. “They’ve waited a while to get married, so a lot of them are going bigger than I think they might have originally.”

Like other retailers shut down at the start of COVID, the store introduced curbside service. During the pandemic when there was a renewed focus on shopping locally, Samalus Getchel also connected with a lot of area growers.

“Whereas in the past there was the convenience of ordering from my wholesaler, I tried to buy as much as I could locally,” she says. “That’s a huge change for me.”

Among emerging wedding businesses, Lisbon Falls-based entrepreneur Hannah Marr of Clique in Style is working on a web application to help brides preview bridal party attire. She’s working on a product with help from a Romanian web developer she connected with remotely during the pandemic. She has also lined up a Portsmouth, N.H.-bridal shop to test the app with the store’s customers.

“Originally I was planning to do a consumer-based pricing model,” Marr says, “but I would really like to move toward partnering with wedding planners and bridal stores who pay the premium and absorb those costs for the customers.”

Meanwhile in Portland, invitation designer Meghan Carey says she’s juggling eight weddings for the 2022 season after three last fall and two in the winter she says were elaborate.

She’s also gotten some 2023 inquiries, and while nothing is yet nailed down, “I’m trying to get the summer invitations to the printers before all of the event-day items consume me.”

If next year is as busy as this year, the off-season should be anything but quiet.