Maine wedding industry urges couples: Wait till next year
Courtesy / Focus Photography
This composite photo shows owners of wedding businesses around Maine, who are urging their clients to return to the state in 2021 or 2022 for their special occasions.
Maine’s wedding and special event businesses have banded together to send a message to clients: Don’t cancel your occasion. Just push it off until 2021.
The #postponedontcancel campaign started over the summer as an effort to encourage wedding and special event clients to postpone their 2020 events and also to buoy the spirits of Maine wedding industry workers, according to a news release.
The campaign responds to the pandemic, which shuttered event businesses in Maine for four months beginning in March, followed by a period of severely limited operations that is still in effect, with no relief in sight.
The campaign includes an image created by Focus Photography in Portland, showing over 30 Maine wedding industry business owners, including venue owners, caterers, planners, design and décor specialists, mixologists, photographers and videographers, bakers, musicians, and limousine drivers. There's also a promotional video created by SP Films in Portland. Click here to view the video.
In October, the campaign gained enough traction to hire a lobbyist to represent the needs of the Maine wedding industry.
The campaign has been shared or mentioned by tourism group Visit Portland, as well as a variety of trade organizations and businesses.
Weddings inject $937 million a year into the Maine economy, supporting 13,600 jobs, according to a 2019 analysis by the University of Southern Maine’s Maine Center for Business and Economic Research.
But the industry lost most business during the 2020 wedding season, and revenue plummeted in the range of $600 million or more.
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