Recession takes sparkle off weddings

The wedding industry is still big business but the amount people are spending is falling. Photo / AP

Connie Banks was planning a "bride's dream" at Tuscany of Garden Oaks, a Houston banquet hall with ceilings painted to resemble the Sistine Chapel. Then the hall's owner filed for bankruptcy.

Banks, whose family paid US$22,000 ($37,300) for the space and catering, was suddenly left with no place to put the 250 people on her wedding list.

"I still feel guilty my parents lost all that money," said Banks, 24, a teacher who found a new venue at the additional cost of having to change the date to a Friday from a Saturday this June. "I also feel guilty guests will have to take more time off from work to attend a Friday wedding."

The US$60-billion-a-year US wedding industry is contracting along with the rest of the economy, said Millie Martini Bratten, editor-in-chief of Conde Nast's Brides magazine in New York. Couples were scaling back on champagne and chocolate fountains, and business failures by florists and caterers were forcing changes in plans.

"People don't time when they fall in love with the economic cycles," she said. "But when times are tight, we do see a pull-back in spending."

The average cost of tying the knot in the US fell 24 per cent last year from 2007, to US$21,814, and slipped in the first quarter to US$19,196, according to Tucson, Arizona-based Wedding Report, a research firm.

The number of vows exchanged will probably drop this year because every economic contraction since 1945 has been followed by a decline in weddings, said Shane McMurray, the firm's chief executive officer. There were 100,000 fewer in 2002 than in 2001, when the US was in an eight-month recession.

The economy has shed about 5.1 million jobs since December 2007, the most in a post-World War II slump, according to the Labour Department. The US jobless rate is 8.5 per cent, the highest since 1983.

Wedding-industry unemployment can't be calculated because photographers, dress makers and others usually don't limit their work to one kind of event, McMurray said.

"Ninety per cent of wedding vendors are small businesses, so these folks are obviously struggling," he said.

In Manhattan, couples are downsizing by opting for cocktail parties instead of sit-down dinners, said Amy Aversa, owner of Sweet Basil Catering in New York.

"It's definitely forcing caterers to get more creative," said Aversa, who estimates her average client is spending 30 per cent less this year.

To trim the budget for a September reception, Aversa said she's using fewer fresh flowers in centrepieces and filling empty spaces with candles and photographs. She's also getting more requests for cupcakes rather than multi-layered bridal cakes.

For Margarita Lambos in Charlotte, North Carolina, the cost of the shrinking economy was US$6200.

Lambos paid cash in advance when she ordered a US$4000 Swarovski crystal-embellished Ines Di Santo gown for her walk down the aisle. Then the recession claimed another victim: the bridal boutique that had her money and her dress.

"Their bankruptcy almost ruined my wedding," said Lambos, a 26-year-old stay-at-home mother. After La Bella Sposa closed in June, Lambos said she contacted the designer's Toronto studio and, parting with US$2200 more, was married in August in her "dream dress".

Lambos said she decided not to bother signing up as a creditor in the La Bella Sposa bankruptcy.

The bridal store couldn't survive a pullback in discretionary spending, said Rick Mitchell, the owners' bankruptcy lawyer.

"People don't necessarily need an US$8000 wedding gown to get married," Mitchell said.

In Houston, after Tuscany of Garden Oaks closed and owner Titus filed for bankruptcy, Banks reserved her second-choice wedding location, Chateau Polonez. She said she thinks her situation "turned out on the better end" of the spectrum.

Minute Maid Park, home of baseball's Houston Astros, was the site of weddings for 33 other brides left without reception spaces by Titus, which also owned Bella Terraza, another venue that shut down.

Chef and television personality Rachael Ray threw them a mass ceremony and party for 500 friends and family in November and aired the event on her syndicated show.

Other area vendors offered discounts to help brides offset the costs of the venues' closings, Banks said.

The recession hadn't begun when Laura McCormick, a stay-at-home mother in Middle Township, New Jersey, posed for pictures with her wedding party in March 2007. McCormick, 28, said she paid Celebrations Studios $4000 and still doesn't have a professional photograph of the event.

"We ended up with pretty much nothing," McCormick said.

Celebration Studios, based in Chester, New Jersey, was low on cash as business started to slow and couldn't pay photographers who took pictures around the time of the McCormick wedding, said Jeffrey Herrmann, Celebration Studio's attorney. Some workers who hadn't been paid kept their images, he said.

The company closed in January 2008 and was sued that month by the New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs, which accused Celebration Studios of violating state consumer fraud law by taking deposits when it knew it wouldn't be able to perform the services.

Under a court order, the agency is distributing photos, negatives and video footage to customers, according to Jeff Lamm, a spokesman for the consumer division.

Celebration Studios didn't intend to deceive clients, Herrmann said.

"The culprit in this was the recession."

- BLOOMBERG