How the New Orleans wedding industry is grappling with the coronavirus pandemic

As is a tradition in the city, newlywed couples dance through the streets of the French Quarter with their wedding guests in second-line parades, filled with live music and dancing.

The city went under lockdown on March 20, and although it began reopening in mid-May, the streets are still empty as it's unsafe for large groups to gather.

Musicians, wedding planners, event coordinators, and countless others in the field are at a standstill.

"There's nowhere it's not happening," he said. "Not like a hurricane. There's no way to really plan for the future right now."

Stephanie Ezcurra and Matt Williams have been planning their wedding for two years, which made having to postpone even more difficult.

"Less than three weeks out, and we had to make a decision really quickly and then change absolutely everything about our wedding quickly," Ezcurra told Business Insider Today. "It was not an easy thing to do even though it was the right thing to do."

The couple has dozens of party favors with their original wedding date on them that they're hoping they can find a way to use.

"Should I just scrap the whole thing now and we have a small wedding with just family?" she said. "There's just a lot of uncertainty. And there's just no right decision because nobody knows what the future holds."

For couples that would rather just be married and not have to wait, a virtual ceremony makes sense.

But many are left feeling like it can't replace the in-person ceremony they're hoping for.

Jennings is considering measures such as hiring nurses to stand at the door of her receptions to check people's temperatures, but she still doesn't know if that will be enough.

Twenty of her spring clients have already postponed their weddings to the fall or spring of next year, and they're asking to put pandemic clauses into their contracts to protect them if the virus makes it so they have to put their weddings off again.

"We're probably more unsure now than we were for the May weddings, the June weddings, where we knew we were still going to be in this in some way, shape, or form," Jennings told Business Insider Today.

"If we move this fall to next spring, that means next fall we have no new bookings, no new weddings," Jennings said. "Everything is just kind of rolling over in expense, which means we make less this year, we make less next year and don't have the opportunity to recoup any of that cost."

LaFrance's business has overhead costs between $25,000 and $30,000 each month, and she has no income coming in at the moment. It's forced her to let go of all five of her employees.

"We're a single income small business here in New Orleans, destination wedding market of the country, and we've lost pretty much 100% of our income for the foreseeable future," she told Business Insider Today.

She added: "It is very scary to look at your calendar and say, 'There is nothing coming in for we don't know how much longer.'"

"It's just been something to help me kind of take up some of my time and give you a little bit of purpose when the bottom kind of falls out from what you're used to doing every single day," she said.

Sixty-eight of her 75 events in 2020 were rescheduled, but she still feels unsure about the future, particularly as research indicates couples shouldn't be rescheduling their weddings for 2021, as the pandemic likely won't be over.

"What has us all so anxious right now is the fact that we don't really have clear, defined parameters for the event industry and when can we start to open up our doors," LaFrance said.

"We've seen New Orleans come back picking itself up from the bootstraps and becoming bigger, better than it was before," Jennings said.

"I think there's always going to be a need for music," Ben Schenck told Business Insider Today. "And that's kind of what I just put my faith in."

• Read more:
• Stop rescheduling your wedding for spring 2021 — the pandemic still won't be over
• A couple got married in the middle of a Black Lives Matter protest after their ceremony was cancelled due to the coronavirus
• A couple fed over 400 frontline workers after they had to postpone their wedding
• Ohio will soon allow people to host weddings with up to 300 people