North County event venues get influx of weddings this year with COVID-19 cautions still in place
BY TAYLOR O’CONNOR
Santa Barbara County’s green rolling hills, beach access, and vast array of vineyards can make anyone’s fairy tale wedding dream come true. People can stay in rustic-style cottages or high-end hotels and can partake of farm-to-table meals with fresh produce from a local farm.
In 2020, many weddings were canceled, and wineries temporarily stopped hosting events until safety measures allowed otherwise. By 2021, wineries were busier than ever with rescheduled 2020 weddings plus new couples booking venues.
In 2022, the wedding industry is showing no sign of slowing with bookings extended to 2023—and 2024 is already under discussion for some venues. As a result, venues have increased their prices and are flexing with the current supply chain issues. Wineries and event centers alike are adapting to the increased demand for events and adjusting their packages to accommodate the variety of needs.
A lot of growth
After many months of being shut down, Santa Ynez-based Gainey Vineyard had a great 2021 wedding season, said Events Manager Sunny Ramirez.
“As a whole, everybody’s excited to have another successful year, and right now, coming into Valentine’s Day we will get another rush of inquiries coming in,” Ramirez said. “We’ve got quite a few events booked, which is beautiful for the industry because it keeps everyone working.”
Ramirez said she’s gotten inquiries for 2023 and had some dates already booked for that year.
“It’s common once it hits January; we have those couples that like to plan, and then we get the last-minute couples that are happy to book a wedding six to nine months out. It’s pretty normal to be booking out to 2023,” she said.
However, Ramirez said there seems to be a greater sense of urgency when it comes to finding a venue and picking a date, and booking the venue for an entire weekend as opposed to having a single-day wedding.
Roblar Winery’s director of events, Leanne Elliott, noticed a similar pattern with more people willing to spend more on their weddings after a long wait, and possibly more income after the stay-at-home orders faded.
“People are tired of waiting, they are done waiting, they are ready to be together, and people are ready to [celebrate] together again,” she added.
Couples will typically plan a weekend filled with a wine tasting that flows into a rehearsal dinner, followed by golfing events, the wedding itself, and then a departing brunch before everyone goes home.
“[We] pride ourselves in our ability to pivot. Because we have multiple properties, we are able to accommodate all those needs and desires. When I see a recurring theme or trend, I will create a package of all of those experiences,” Elliott said. “Last year was dark as an industry until about July, when we got the green light to have in-person events with guidelines. Our winery and farm were packed. We were doing two years’ worth of events in six months.”
So far in 2022, Roblar’s received more inquiries than ever, reaching dates in 2024. Elliott said people feel more confident the season will continue—even with the omicron variant, which isn’t causing as severe of symptoms, and restrictions remaining minimal.
Lingering fear
Even with anticipation and excitement for celebration, co-owner of Buellton’s Zaca Creek Chelsea Rushing said her clients have a more cautious approach after COVID-19’s havoc.
“I’ve had brides lose their family members due to COVID a month before their wedding, and they want to push it back because they don’t want people to be talking about that at the wedding,” Rushing said. “I’ve had couples push it back three times [because] they are looking at losing family members to this unstoppable situation.”
It’s been a roller coaster for couples; they want to celebrate but feel conflicted because it’s during a time of social distancing and health precautions, she said.
“Navigating weddings has been incredibly emotional; looking at the full picture of what their family used to look like and then what it looks like two years later, I would say people have had vast changes,” Rushing said.
As a result, she said Zaca Creek’s been very accommodating to rescheduling and helping couples have COVID-19-cautious weddings with safety standards in place. She explained that some parties used bracelets for guests to display various levels of comfort: Green means they can be hugged and touched, yellow means they can be approached but not touched, and red means stay socially distanced from them.
“It’s so interesting to see all of the stuff pop up because of the pandemic. Sanitizer stations are really common and rapid test purchases for guests to make everyone feel comfortable, and that’s in addition to running a normal wedding,” she said.
There are also many parties switching to weekday weddings and an uptick in weddings with fewer than 100 guests and intimate elopements with fewer than 50 guests, she said.
“It’s been one of those things where the name of the game is pivot,” Rushing said. “Who knows how it will transition. I know people have wanted it the way it was before, but I don’t know if that’s going to be a possibility.
“I’m hopeful we can get to the point of large gatherings, but it’s so hard to know and say, ‘Let’s plan this.’”
Reach Staff Writer Taylor O’Connor at toconnor@santamariasun.com.
Whether it’s COVID-19 or cost concerns stopping you from planning your wedding, SLO Pop-up Weddings might be the solution for you
BY MALEA MARTIN
Jaime and Alec Buxton had their dream wedding planned for 2020: a traditional ceremony with close to 100 of their friends and family there to celebrate with them. But the pandemic stopped the Buxtons and many other couples from tying the knot in the way they had originally envisioned.
“We postponed it a couple of times,” Alec said. “It got to the point where we started to have to really finalize the details, and we realized that there was no end in sight to the pandemic. At that point, it was like, ‘OK, when are we ever going to get married?’”
The Buxtons decided to do a mini wedding in late 2021: 35 guests; a small, intimate ceremony; and way less fuss.
“This smaller wedding had both less planning involved in it, less impact on our friends and family, less cost impact, but also we just wanted to get it over with,” Alec laughed. “Not in a negative way, but we were just tired of waiting.”
The Buxtons hired Korinna Peterson, founder of SLO Pop-up Weddings, to help them plan their small and intimate wedding. Peterson also does full-blown weddings through her company Le Festin Events, but the pop-up division specializes in planning smaller weddings and elopements across the Central Coast, offering an easier and more affordable option for clients who just want to keep it sweet and simple.
“There’s two different kinds of couples out there,” Peterson said. “One who wants the full-blown wedding, and there are others who definitely just want the smaller, more intimate elopement.”
Within the past two years particularly, Peterson has seen the demand for those smaller weddings grow.
“There are a lot of couples who were propelled to elope or have these mini weddings, but they still wanted to get that feel of a ceremony and reception,” Peterson said. “I think a majority of the people are definitely looking at the cost factor.”
For the Buxtons, hiring a wedding planner wasn’t originally in the budget. But once they switched gears to planning a mini wedding, they realized it was well worth it.
“I think when I originally started planning our wedding, I was like, ‘I could never get a wedding planner, I couldn’t afford this,’” Jaime said. “Then when I started talking to Korinna, she just was so affordable. To have someone help coordinate, it was amazing.”
Peterson has witnessed a new type of wedding emerge in recent years: It lies somewhere in between an elopement at the courthouse and a 200-person celebration.
“Originally, when I started the pop-up division of my company, it was really based more toward the traditional elopement: two people, a photographer, a coordinator, the officiant, and then flowers. One hour, and everybody’s happy,” Peterson said. “Then, within the last five years or so, a majority of our clients have requested if they can have maybe five people attend, to now we’re having 20 to 30 people attend.”
This trend became a necessity during the pandemic, as couples like the Buxtons were forced to cancel their bigger plans and opt for something smaller. But once the “I dos” were all said and done, the Buxtons said they wouldn’t have had it any other way.
“I think we both agree that we were both happy that we actually did a smaller guest count,” Alec said. “The intimacy of that was nice.”
Jaime added that with the smaller guest list, it was easy to keep the party rolling after the wedding.
“We took a small party bus into San Luis Obispo, and most of the guests got to ride on that,” she said. “If we had done a really big wedding we wouldn’t have been able to do that, and spend that extra time with people.”
Since Peterson also plans full-scale weddings through her company, she’s able to use the connections she already has in the wedding community to put on smaller weddings without the huge price tag.
“Our package is all in one: You get the photographer, the officiant, a coordinator, we handle the flowers. We really customize the ceremony,” Peterson said.
Whether a couple chooses to have 20 or 200 attendees, Peterson said all the weddings she plans come back to sharing your special day with the people you love the most.
“I think the pandemic has made a lot of people realize the really important people in their life.”
Reach Staff Writer Malea Martin, from the Sun’s sister paper, at mmartin@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Feb 10-17, 2022.