McKinney wedding industry experiences ‘boom’ following pandemic lull

Each & Every Detail has finished work on all the weddings that were rescheduled due to COVID-19, Kidd said. Chestnut Square, a nonprofit McKinney venue with indoor and outdoor wedding packages, has one more reschedule to complete, said Kim Ducote, wedding and special event manager for the nonprofit. But many other vendors may be still working through reschedules, McKinney wedding planner Jennifer Klassen said.

“A percentage of the 2022 weddings are really do-overs from [20]19 and 2020, and they’ve already gotten [legally] married,” said Klassen, the former owner of the wedding venue Gather in Downtown McKinney.

“We’ve lost a lot of businesses because of COVID, either because they didn’t have the financial ability to withstand it or because they lost staff,” Kidd said.

Businesses that survived the worst of the pandemic have had to adjust to prices increasing across the industry. The cost of floral arrangements has gone up, Kidd said.

Most venues operating today pivoted in some way to make it through the shutdowns. Historic Chestnut Square offered elopements—outdoor ceremonies for 10 people or fewer—once the initial restrictions were lifted. When city ordinances allowed for 50% capacity, the historic village shifted to what Ducote calls “microweddings.”

Those two modified ceremonies are what allowed the nonprofit to stay afloat for most of 2020 and 2021, Ducote said. She added even though Chestnut Square has been operating at full capacity for both its indoor and outdoor ceremonies, the elopements and micro-weddings are still popular today.

“There’s people still affected by [the pandemic] financially in their own personal lives,” Ducote said. “Instead of having a 200-person wedding, now they’re forced to do 50 people just because of budget. ... So I think [the microwedding] helps for those folks that were affected by it long term.”

Chestnut Square typically hosts 70-90 weddings a year, according to data from the nonprofit. In 2018, the venue hosted 72 ceremonies. It hosted 78 in 2019. In 2020, there were 92 weddings at the historic village. That jump was due to hosting multiple elopements per day, Ducote said. Last year, Chestnut Square hosted 81 weddings.

Kidd advised couples to be patient with wedding staff during this uncharacteristically busy time.

“It’s not just, ‘Oh, we’re busy.’ It is more weddings than we’ve ever seen after two years of devastation,” Kidd said.