Social Creatures by Default

COVID 19 is something that none of us will ever forget. Like a wild forest fire, it has swept through our industry, causing devastation like nothing ever before and the fire is still not out.

As we head towards step 4 in the government’s roadmap, June 21st is looking more and more likely to be the date in which (hopefully) all restrictions will be lifted and full-scale weddings will be allowed once more.
It has been very encouraging to see many of our existing customers booking into shows having made it through what has been the most testing year ever.
New businesses too are emerging from different backgrounds, new to the industry, bringing fresh ideas.
Existing businesses who couldn’t operate in their normal way have found ways, with a gun to the head, to diversify their business, creating new ventures and developing seedling ideas that have turned into new profitable businesses in a few short months.
Once we get back to normal, these new businesses should be encouraged and further developed and not left behind and forgotten. 
Many businesses have taken their product or service online, even if before, they thought it not possible and there has been a huge consumer shift too; we have been forced online to shop. Opportunities have been seized here where once a video meeting would have been looked down on as a second-class media, is now embraced as a tool for many as the new norm, not just for meetings but now as a new media for presentations, group classes, advertising and more.
But people need people, we are social creatures by default, we cannot and will not continue to shop solely online or in bloody supermarkets as a cashier told me not too long ago “I think people are just coming in because they are bored”
I think she hit the nail on the head, we are bored. Bored of being online, bored of supermarket visits, bored of not being able to visit friends; in essence we are fed up with not being able to socially interact physically with one another. 

We are Social Creatures by default.

This is why I firmly believe that wedding exhibitions and fayres, when permitted, will see attendances like never seen before. 
Shopping for a wedding dress, a wedding ring, a vintage wedding car, a table setting, a bar, Grooms suits, pizza ovens, photographers, etc online will work to an extent. But a wedding is far too personal; a wedding is as much if not more about the person delivering the service or providing the product than the service or product itself. Touching, feeling, tasting, and physically meeting the people involved in a wedding at a wedding show will never be beaten.

 It is time to dust everything down, throw away the jogging pants and step back into the light you so richly deserve. I believe 2021 and 2022 will see a surge in weddings that are bigger and more affluent than ever seen before. There will be opportunities aplenty, Just make sure you’re at the party.