You could call it the ultimate wedding crasher as hurricane Dorian is expected to reach the Maritimes this weekend and it’s affecting several weddings planned in the region.
Hillary Wright isn’t going to let Dorion stop her wedding day; they are pushing forward with the special day but making some adjustments.
“At first I was pretty upset, you think early September, it might not come our way,” said Wright. “You just have to embrace it and be present because you can’t do anything about it (the weather). We’re just excited to get married.”
The wedding planning team at Elegant Productions are frantically working to prepare for three weddings this weekend.
This isn’t the first time they’ve planned weddings that coincide with a hurricane and so they are prepared for some unexpected surprises and plenty of last-minute changes and adjustments are going to be made to accommodate the arrival Hurricane Dorian — their unwanted wedding guest.
“We are taking our once made back up plans and making back up plans for the backup plans,” said Katelyn Bellefontaine, CEO and creative director with Elegant Productions. “It’s been a lot of managing our clients, managing vendors, locations, guests, travel and all of those things this week in preparation for the storm.”
Bellefontaine said one of the three weddings has been bumped up a day earlier, as to avoid the hurricane that’s set to arrive Saturday afternoon but it’s still not clear how just how much wind and rain it will bring at this point.
Preparation will be important for these ceremonies, as will safety.
“It’s not the movies, not everything is going to be perfect,” said Bellefontaine. “Weather is always a factor when you decide to host your wedding anywhere in the world, but especially the Maritimes and so we just have to make the best of it.”
The Halifax Regional municipality says five weddings are planned for city-owned venues this weekend and staff is working with all groups to either make venue changes or examining alternative dates.”
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“It’s a tough call, it’s the most important day for many people but at the same time the municipality has to think about public safety and as a result, we will be closing all our parks Saturday and Sunday,” said Brendan Elliot, HRM spokesperson. “We do have an orchestrated plan and one of those will be to be communicating with the public as much as possible.”
Updates from the municipality will be available on the HRM website and from their official government Twitter account @hfxgov