Storm-Proofing Your Event: Hurricane Prep and Post-Storm Tips

🌪️ New Episode Alert! Surviving Storms with Style: Wedding Planning in Hurricane Season ⛪

In this insightful episode of Beyond Vows & Veils: The Luxury Wedding Planning Experience Podcast, Brittany dives into the stormy side of wedding planning—literally. With her Florida expertise, she tackles the unique challenges couples face when planning weddings during hurricane season. 🌧️💍

From creating backup plans to managing the financial and logistical fallout of postponements, Brittany shares invaluable advice for couples and vendors alike. Discover the key steps to safeguard your big day, including:
✨ Why having a Plan C is non-negotiable
✨ Navigating post-storm communication with vendors and venues
✨ Understanding the financial impact of postponements vs. cancellations
✨ Preparing for potential venue changes in the wake of disasters

Brittany’s personal stories and pro tips will leave you feeling equipped to handle even the stormiest situations. Whether you’re tying the knot in Florida or planning a destination wedding, this episode is packed with must-know strategies to keep your dream day intact—rain or shine. ☀️

Tune in now and learn how to weather-proof your wedding! 🎧

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ABOUT EVENTRICS INDIAN WEDDINGS

Eventrics Indian Weddings is an award-winning team of experienced wedding planning and management experts, specializing in large-scale Indian Weddings & Fusion Weddings in Miami, Orlando, Palm Beach, and destinations worldwide.

The Eventrics Indian Weddings team offers complete and partial planning services with a personal and hands-on approach. We believe each couple deserves a fully invested wedding planner to be engaged throughout the entire process to ensure no detail is missed or overlooked!

Transcript

Brittany (00:00.814)
Hey everyone, welcome back to Beyond Vows and Veils. Thank you again for joining me each week to listen, learn, and discover more ways that you can make more informed decisions on your wedding planning journey. So I'm gonna be talking today about a topic that I feel like is at the top of everyone's minds, and that is essentially what you're supposed to do during extreme weather events like a hurricane. It's been a crazy past week, y'all. Hurricane Milton obviously was a pretty massive

of storm and my heart goes out to everyone that was seriously impacted by the storm. You know, we had a wedding in Atlanta this past weekend and just to get ahead of the storm, our team had to fly out on Tuesday. We weren't supposed to leave till Thursday, but obviously we were afraid of airport shutdowns. Tampa had already closed and so we just wanted to get out there. And so it's a little unnerving, obviously, to leave like our friends and family behind while we

traveled to Atlanta, but thankfully everyone from our side was okay and there wasn't any major damages on our end. But I know that there was a lot of people that were impacted and so definitely our hearts and thoughts go out to them. I wanted to just create a very brief sort of episode for anyone that was impacted by Hurricane Milton or if you're a couple right now and you're trying to navigate

to formulate your next game plan or what to do. So I'll kind of be talking a little bit more in past tense and then I'll also be talking about like just in current present future what you can be doing to try to navigate this as best as you can. So one of the things that I'll say is the majority of the clients that I work with do not live in the state of Florida. So Florida has become a really big destination wedding state for many reasons, right? We've got our beautiful

beaches, we've got obviously pretty great weather year round for the most part. And so one of the things that though is important for everyone to think about is if you're going to be hosting your wedding during the hot summer months, it's like a thousand degrees outside and the humidity level is very, very high. And then if you are going to be hosting your wedding towards early fall for us is still technically hurricane season. So while this particular hurricane Milton did come in a little bit late,

Brittany (02:30.416)
later than usual think it's important that you always have a contingency plan, which we talked about on previous podcast episodes, which is more like weather calls. But I kind of referenced it as a plan C, right? You have your plan B, which is whether you're activating an indoor outdoor or setting up a tent or some sort of contingency plan in case of inclement weather. And a plan C is a little bit more for extreme weather events such as a hurricane pivot. So I have

a client actually that's going to be hosting her wedding in Sarasota this week. So we're about one week since Hurricane Milton hit and it was in Sarasota which was a direct hit on the path of the hurricane. And so as you can imagine, last week we're balancing between traveling early to Atlanta and at the same time having conversations with our family about

Are we going to need to potentially move this event? Because none of us know what the damage is going to potentially be with this venue. I've been in experiences before in the past, not often, but one other time where we had another hurricane that had hit and it greatly affected the venue's ability to be able to actually support that family. so without even hesitation, that property reached out and is like, listen, our swimming pool is like seven feet underwater. You guys aren't going to be

to be welcomed here in terms of us giving you obviously any level of hospitality. We're going to be closing the resort for a period of time. Here's a full refund because this falls under our force majeure, our act of God, right? This is an event that nobody could have predicted or caused not to happen. And so essentially I was able alongside the designer and some of the other vendors to really like pull through and work the relationships and

find another property in central Florida that was able to host their occasion. And like it went off without a hitch, thankfully to the venue and all the vendors involved. mean, it took like a huge team effort to make that happen. But from a guest perspective, it was really seamlessly presented and essentially was just moving it from this location to this location. And so it really is definitely something I know can be scary in the moment you're going through it, but you have experts to rely on that are going to help you to navigate through it.

Brittany (04:55.376)
So back to this other bride who's getting married this weekend and thankfully happy to report she's getting married in Sarasota which we're all very very excited about. The venue over there was fantastic so essentially they called me literally the day after the storm or sent an email rather and let us know where they stood with the property. They have like 160 workers out there literally cleaning up all of the debris. Thankfully there was no major damage to the property. They got power back.

on. So honestly, was like a collective effort, but they had no issue being able to welcome us back in. And so that property was deemed fit to still be able to obviously host our occasion. So thankfully we didn't have to move into any type of plan, plan C. But part of the plan C that I was developing with the bride in the week leading to the event day ahead of the storm was, okay, if we have to move this event, where is the next feasible

city that we can do this at that won't be as impacted potentially by the storm. And again, it's anybody's guess, right? Until the storm passes, none of us know how things are going to go, but we picked something a little bit further into Florida, which was central Florida, so the Orlando area. So I'd reached out to some of my venue partners just to see first and foremost who had the date available, who would be able to quickly pick up this event. I shared with them all the details in terms of timeline, event spaces, the guest room block information.

And the venue that we were for Plan A and where we're going to be this weekend actually is in-house catering. So it was kind of unique with the pivot plan that I was going to have to find a whole new caterer to be able to support the family. Luckily, this particular caterer has a fabulous reputation. The family has trialed their food out at other social functions. They felt comfortable with that pivot understanding they weren't going to be able to have a tasting, right? So what we basically did is we reached out to the venue.

We got everything ready to go almost like it was ready to be a contract and then at the same time we had sent all the menus over to this other caterer. They reviewed it thoroughly. They were ready to present a contract with pricing post storm if we needed to go in that direction and then we kind of let our lead designer know hey this is kind of what potentially is going to happen. All of your access and storage times are going to remain the same and so we were all sort of just all in the understanding that after this hurricane hit

Brittany (07:24.586)
If we had to pull those triggers, it was going to be able to be done very seamlessly, but would have to be done essentially within 48 hours.

And so with that being said, we were very fortunate that the hurricane did not impact us in the way that we had to do that. But the one advice I would give to any couples out there that are in a situation where they see a storm or just something on the horizon, creating a pivot plan because that plan C has to be pulled very quickly if you are going to be doing that. And first and foremost, you have to make sure that your venue essentially releases you from your contract and they can only do that after

the disaster or hurricane or whatever has hit for them to be able to, you know, get you out of your agreement and move forward. Because trust me, the last thing any property wants to do is host you at their event if they're not ready. I mean, that's their reputation on the line. That's their service standard on the line. So if they say that they're ready, then we have to take them at their word that they're ready to proceed forward as planned.

One thing I definitely want to also mention, because I get this question a lot from clients, is like, OK, while the airports are open and the venue is not ruined, the downtown area is still impacted. A lot of the cute little coffee shops or lunch spots that our guests would otherwise be attending are not open because they were impacted by the hurricane. And so that's a personal decision for you and the family to decide if it warrants enough for a postponement. You obviously would have to have a conversation with the property.

as well. But understand that there's not that there's zero financial burden to you and the family. So to give some context, if you're this close a week or two weeks out from your wedding, most likely the floral or fresh products, some of the food product even has been ordered. And so it's not maybe food you could work out with your property. I'm not sure it would just depend on the details of that. But the floral is a hard cost to your designer.

Brittany (09:27.724)
So you're going to have to eat the cost of some of the things that otherwise are not going to obviously be ready for your new date. And so there is going to unfortunately be a little bit of financial burden there for the family that nobody can otherwise prevent. And I think venue and vendors do a really good job of trying to work with you to the best of their abilities if you do decide to postpone. And then ultimately, like let's say your event, your venue, excuse me, was not deemed fit after the storm.

over it and you don't want to host a wedding anymore for whatever reason and you decide that you want to cancel your function. Well understand a cancellation is very different. Your venue very well would probably get you out of your contract given if they're not deemed fit, but all of your vendor contracts are going to be a little bit different, right? Because some of your deposits are going to come at a loss and so those are things that you have to consider that every vendor and every venue is going to be a little bit different, but it's not just going to be like here's all of your

money back and like wish you on your merry way especially if you're that close a lot of you know time energy effort has already been spent a lot of resources have already been invested into planning your occasion and so at that point it's just damage control into what hasn't been delivered yet to then understand how that's going to essentially come back to you and the family. But I know that these are not very fun conversations I try to create and structure these podcasts to be more informative and just more supportive

for you as opposed to sugar coating the details. If you have any questions though or you're in a situation specifically because of the past two hurricanes that we've experienced this month in October, don't hesitate to reach out to our office. We always want to be able to provide even just high level support to guide you in a maybe a good direction. We're here to offer that and for anyone that was affected by these past two hurricanes our heart goes out to you. I really hope no one experienced anything too crazy and if you did you know

our hearts go out to you. So thank you so much again for joining me. I hope that this was supportive for you.