Sonoma wedding industry faces COVID crisis

Peak wedding season runs from May to October, generating billions across the U.S. Last year, nearly 250,000 blushing brides chose the Golden State for their nuptial backdrop, more than any other state in the nation. Nearly 4,000 chose to say “I do” in wine country.

In 2019, the average Sonoma County wedding cost $34,000, pumping an estimated $136 million into the local economy. But COVID-19 has put a pin in the 2020 wedding balloon. The champagne has gone flat, and love is on hold.

The white dress is likely on backorder, too, with 80 percent of the world’s supply of wedding gowns manufactured in China, according to the American Bridal and Prom Industry Association. Factories elsewhere — like in Vietnam and Burma — source most of their materials from China, too, so the true percentage of wedding-industry garments stuck on the wrong side of the supply chain is likely far higher.

Tom Koos, 55, of Woodside, and Leigh-Anne Lehrman, 51, of Santa Cruz, had expected to exchange vows in Sonoma this fall, their wedding the culmination of a seven-year courtship. While their love story continues, the wedding is off. At least for now, thanks to COVID-19. “We’re kind of on ice right now,” Koos said.

With many of their invited guests at higher risk for coronavirus complications, Koos and Lehrman felt that pushing ahead with their plans felt a bit reckless. Besides, most of the vendors the couple had engaged pulled out preemptively in the middle of March. “We got a lot of emails to the effect that they would all still love our business, just not now,” Koos said.

The postponement, while disappointing, is not devastating for the couple. “We want a fun wedding, but real life kicks in. It’s expensive, we have busy lives, and it’s a second marriage for us both,” Koos said. “A lot of us don’t even feel comfortable going to the grocery store yet. Expanding our social bubble of contact for a wedding? It feels like a completely unappetizing thing to do.”

Koos and Lehrman are considering their options, with a range of possibilities now on the table. They might radically simplify and get married at city hall, or go all out with an international venue at some future point. “It’s really easy to get married in New Zealand,” Koos said. “Fill out an online form and pay 150 bucks.” But that outcome is unlikely for now, Koos said, because in the effort to control the spread of coronavirus New Zealand has banned most foreign travelers since March 19.

Avid travelers under normal circumstances, Koos and Lehrman have considered getting married in Bora Bora instead. But weddings there — irrespective of the pandemic — are a complex affair. “You’ve got to inform the village elder and send out the town crier,” Koos said. “It’s laughably complicated to get married in French Polynesia.”

A wedding requires two people in love, but a phalanx of secondary characters play important roles, too.

Sixty percent of Rebecca Gosselin’s photography business depends on the regular booking of wine country weddings, and the current situation, Gosselin told the Index-Tribune, looks pretty bleak. “Everybody through September has already canceled or postponed,” she said.

“Sonoma is on top of a worldwide list of best places to get married,” Gosselin said, adding that 90 percent of her customers come from out of town. But with air travel complicated by the coronavirus, much of that “destination wedding” clientele is now staying home.

Gosselin doesn’t anticipate business to pick up anytime soon, either, despite the steady easing of lockdown parameters. “My gut is telling me it’s not going to be opening up for 100-plus guests in September,” Gosselin said. “My instinct is saying gatherings of 20 to 50 will be allowed at the beginning.”

Hein Lee, owner of Dare and Dazzle, a new bridal shop on at 294 W. Napa St., opened for business on Feb. 28. “Literally two weeks later, we were told to shelter in place,” Lee said. Her large, sunny store, filled with bridal gowns, bridesmaids dresses, and other formal attire, was forced to go dark for nearly three months. “I told my assistant that 2020 will probably be a wash, and we’re focused now on brides preparing for next year.”

But with talk of a second wave and a likely virus spike in winter, Lee is pragmatic about her venture’s viability. “My investor and I sat and talked exit strategies recently. There’s only so long we can hang on. We’ve got a lot of ideas we’re throwing around and we’ll see what we can do. Our dresses are off the rack and ready to go, so we’re in a good position to accommodate these quicker Zoom weddings,” Lee said.

In the same way, local event venues and caterers couldn’t possibly have imagined the way that COVID-19 would clear their calendars. “We are in the process of rebooking almost all of our summer weddings,” said Andrea Koweek of Girl and the Fig catering. Weddings comprise 85 percent of the company’s total offsite catering business, and the economics of the situation are increasingly dire.

Local officiants have been likewise affected, with what should be a torrent of summer business now slowed to a trickle. “We have recently lost or moved all our April, May, June and now July and August large destination weddings,” Rev. Peadar Dalton and his wife, Margarita Ramirez-Dalton, said in an email to the Index-Tribune. Many of the postponements include scaled-back plans. “We hope we can again bring weddings back to wine country communities in smaller, intimate ways,” Ramirez-Dalton said. “So many of our fellow wedding vendors are rethinking the size of weddings.”

Despite all the uncertainty, love springs eternal, even in the midst of a global pandemic. “We’ve had very few cancellations as most are choosing to postpone,” Koweek said.

For Koos and Lehrman, their eventual marriage is what matters most. The wedding itself is of less significance. For the moment, however, all of it feels somewhat superfluous, given the astonishing and tumultuous state of worldwide affairs. “On top of civil unrest, and 40 million unemployed, and a pandemic that knows no end, and political uncertainty, postponing our wedding is somewhat of a relief. There isn’t a lot of joy going around at the moment,” Koos said. “There’s a lot of chaos, and crisis fatigue. To tell you the truth, we’re just not in the mood.”

Email Kate at kate.williams@sonomanews.com.