With tailored dresses and suits, chosen flowers, reserved farms and ready-made invitations, there were several couples from the North who, due to the Covid-19 outbreak, were forced to postpone the wedding for “better days”.
At Bom Jesus, in Braga, for example, seven weddings that were scheduled for March and April have already been postponed.
The dean of the sanctuary, João Paulo Alves, told Lusa that he already has 127 weddings scheduled for this year, but, he admitted, many of them “will eventually have to stay for better days”.
“Unpublished” decision closes Bom Jesus in Braga: “It was very difficult”
But the stories of postponed weddings are multiplying all over the country.
After 10 years of living together, Ana and Thiago decided, in January, to schedule a wedding for the next June 12th, but, in the meantime, due to the “bastard of the virus”, they have already postponed the ceremony, for a date yet to be defined.
“I don’t conceive of a wedding without hugs, without affection, without kisses, for fear of contaminating or being contaminated. Marriage is the celebration of love and this celebration should be done in its fullness, ”said Ana Matias, a 39-year-old architect, resident in Matosinhos, to Lusa.
The fifth for the party was already booked, about 100 confirmed guests and the dress bought, but for now everything is suspended.
“Maybe it will be for June next year, let’s see how things evolve”, shoots Ana.
Until then, she promises to continue to be very careful with the line, the devil will not weave them and, the date arrived, the dress she bought for the wedding will no longer suit her.
“Don’t make this event the last of your life. Protect yourself ”, reads in the publication of the‘ online ’page of‘ The Wedding Villa ’, a space in Porto that brings together all sectors and suppliers of preparation for events, including weddings.
It was with this and other similar messages that Mariana Duarte, founder of ‘Griffin’ (the company that created ‘The Wedding Villa’) warned couples to start postponing their weddings.
“Our customers were not aware of what was going to happen, in fact, we took the initiative to talk to them. Some accepted it well, others not so much. In the case of weddings, the first reaction was to want to cancel, for this reason, we made a publication to appeal not to cancel, but rather to postpone ”, explained, in statements to Lusa, the founder.
Mariana Duarte chose to close, on March 12, the ‘The Wedding Villa’, a space that, daily, receives “about six brides”, sometimes to try on the dress, shoes and jewelry, now to choose the photographer, videographer, florist, farm and catering service.
Along with the closing of the villa and, consequently, postponement of appointments, Mariana Duarte, who also monitors ‘Griffin’, the company responsible for the total organization of events, has already seen “postponed one of the 17 weddings scheduled for this year”, in Portugal.
“We postponed a wedding that was going to take place in March and, we expect that in the month of April there will be so many others and in May, I didn’t want to think about it, but we will have several postponements”, said Mariana Duarte, admitting that the pace of work, past few days, “have been mind-blowing”.
“At this moment, we always try to imagine what we can do in the worst case scenario (…) It is obvious that we are going to lose a lot of money, there is no doubt whatsoever, but I think we will be able to handle it”, he confessed.
With the postponement of weddings, Mariana Duarte predicts, in addition to a “financial loss” for most services and suppliers, an “overhead of weddings per week”.
In addition to working throughout the national territory, the company that Mariana Duarte founded almost 10 years ago, also organizes weddings in Italy, where the situation, compared to Portugal, “is much more serious”.
For this year, 10 weddings were scheduled in the country, of these, three have already been canceled.
“The situation in Italy worries me a lot. At this time, there is no guaranteed event in Italy from March to December. None. Here in Portugal we can still say that we hope to do events again before July, in Italy, I don’t know if we will be able to do it before the end of the year ”, he concluded.
Marta Ramos, 34, from Albergaria-a-Velha, also had a wedding scheduled, in this case for May 2.
The link was scheduled in November 2019, at a time when Marta and Tiago, the groom, were very far from imagining what was to come.
“Until February, I thought everything was fine, but now in March we realized that there would be no chance and, what a remedy, we had to postpone”, said Marta Ramos.
The couple, who resides in London, had everything taken care of for the wedding, including trips to Portugal, but now it’s time to cancel everything and try to reschedule for September.
“We really want to believe that, by then, the virus is gone, but you never know… It sucks, but it’s just a few more months. And, look, we have to think positive: this way, we will have some more time to think about the step we are going to take ”, he shoots, with humor.
Already Nina Pérez, executive director of the international platform ‘Casamentos.pt’, which monitors all sectors necessary for the preparation of ‘online’ weddings, revealed, in a reply sent to Lusa, that the recent times have been “challenging”.
“We just completed a study with more than 2,600 users from Italy, Spain and France. The results are encouraging: 91.3% of the couples chose to postpone and only 8.7% canceled the marriage ”, explained the official.
Although “it is still too early” to make predictions in Portugal, Nina Pérez believes that “there may be about 3,000 marriages affected”.
“For our part, we know that weddings cannot happen during this period, but we know that soon,‘ love will be celebrated again, ”he concluded.
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