Dear Governor Inslee,
We request that the wedding and event industry be included in developing guidelines to allow professionally run private events, at licensed venues, to begin again in Phase 2. The health and safety of our clients and our employees is our top priority and we want to be proactive in addressing the risks posed by COVID-19. The intent of this letter is to outline a plan and propose a phased approach consistent with the May 1st announcement, as we set out below. Much like the commitments and proposals coming from the restaurant industry, we are fully confident it is possible to reopen professionally run private events safely under a phased approach and stand ready to formally submit our industry protocols.
Who are we? Washington has thousands of event professionals; a large percentage of whom are women and minority owned businesses. The vast majority of event companies are owner-operated sole proprietorships and LLC's. Who we are is a massive economic engine for our communities. Who we are is event venues, caterers, event planners, decorators, DJs, officiants, photographers, videographers, photo-booths, AV services, lighting specialist, bar services, florists and more. Who we are is the people who make the celebration of life's most significant moments possible and create memories that are the most treasured of a lifetime.
To add perspective, a great majority of our industry operates events with guest counts between 50 to 250 attendees. Events with less than 50 typically do not utilize the broad spectrum of our professional services and often do not take place in licensed venues. Currently, around 90% of our industry is out of work. Of the thousands of businesses dedicated to operating professional events, we estimate that the vast majority will not survive the current phased approach that has been set in place. Damage to our industry will result in significant financial losses to our businesses but the greater impact will be what our industry has on the wellness of our region.
We are writing because we are fully confident that we can implement safety protocols for professionally run private events, on par, if not better than our restaurant counterparts. Professionally run private events in a licensed venue are more like the restaurant business than a typical "social gathering" and in many ways actually have advantages over restaurants in the COVID-19 context. At our events, we know exactly who will attend, when they will arrive, and when they will leave. A restaurant does not know those details. Because we have that information, we also can better control for the flow of guest arrival and departure. Rogue weddings have begun to happen around our state in peoples' homes. Without question there is a great difference between how COVID-19 safety measures will be enforced at a licensed business (which will be concerned about not only the safety of employees and attendees, but also about liability and putting their business license at risk) versus a private home where there is no staff to enforce safety protocols, insufficient space to adequately social distance and no business license put at risk by an unsafe event. Based on these and other factors, professionally run private events warrant different treatment than other "social gatherings."
We ask that the State establish a "Wedding & Events Industry Stabilization Fund" to be paid to businesses whose revenue source is the wedding and event industry. We ask that this fund provide grants to qualifying event-based businesses, giving special consideration to owner-operated, sole proprietorships and LLCs for a period of 12 months from the time the fund is established. Those grants would be intended to help our industry recover from the catastrophic loss we have experienced and continue to experience.
In closing, we ask for urgent action. The economic health of our industry is at a critical point. Event vendors are facing critical revenue decline for 2020 and even 2021, as many events are rescheduling to next year. As a majority of events are weekend affairs, our inventory of available opportunities to produce revenue is a limited one, 52 weekends each year. In fact, for many venues and professionals their business is seasonal, limited to the May-September high priority wedding season. When we move a 2020 date to 2021, we lose the new revenue for 2021 that we need to keep our doors open. The damage we have suffered is due not only to those dates cancelled by the Stay Home order, but also to the lost revenue from moving those dates to other open dates this year and in 2021. Additionally, fear and uncertainty surrounding the possibility for events to hapen in the future has led to a contraction on inquiries and planning for future events This contraction means no deposits for future events, a critical element of cash flow that supports many of our businesses through the off-season.
Couples have made it clear that they intend to get married this year and will not put their major life milestone on hold for a pandemic. We respectfully ask that you allow our small businesses to return to work so we cannot only generate much-needed income and provide jobs, but so we can assist in helping people celebrate safely. Many people will not stop celebrating, so it falls to the State to decide if they will be given the eans to celebrate safely while generating income for local businesses. For the sake of our communities and our livelihoods, we sincerely hope that you will make the choice to allow people to celebrate safely at professionally run events at licensed venues.
Thank you for your time and consideration. Thousands of businesses and lives are in dire need of your swift support in order to survive. We look forward to working with our State legislators to proactively address this crisis and welcome your comments and updates. Thank you in advance for supporting our petition.
