The Tribune

By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

DESTINATION weddings have the Bahamas Bridal Association’s members busy straight through to the early months of next year, its president said yesterday.

Cindy Coakley-Knowles, told Tribune Business yesterday that wedding planners will be busy straight into February with “weddings every weekend”.

“We are all busy with destination events. We are experiencing a very busy New Year’s weekend with the exception of one or two members,” she said.

 She cautioned, however, that these weddings are all “micro weddings” consisting of less than 20 people in attendance, but they all still have to pay for photographers, wedding licences and booking venues to have their event.

“For 50 or so guests for destination weddings that’s huge, but I know for Bahamian weddings that is kind of small. But for a destination wedding anywhere from 40 and up would be large. But now, for example, my wedding on Saturday only has eight persons in total and we are seeing a lot of other planners reporting that they are only serving a couple. But with that all we have to do for a couple is provide the required witnesses. Other than that we’re seeing anywhere from a couple to a maximum of 10 people at a wedding.”

Ms Coakley-Knowles also said: “Depending on the size and the time of the wedding, we can do more than one wedding a day, but to my knowledge no one is doing more than one wedding now, but most of them have work.”

This end of 2021 is a far cry from the pain the Bahamas Bridal Association members endured in 2020 when there was no work at all, as the country’s borders were shut down and heavy restrictions were placed on social gatherings for even local weddings.

Ms Coakley-Knowles said about the local wedding scene coming back, “It’s not as much as the destination weddings now, but we are seeing a few. There are a few locals in there that are trending along the same route of smaller weddings because they know they have to.”

The COVID-19 restrictions are in place for large gatherings during this period of heightened awareness around the Omicron variant and its higher level of contagion.