Chennai, Mar 30, 2020 (Issuewire.com) - Weddings are a grand affair, and a typical Indian wedding is never complete without a minimum of 500 guests. With the enforced social distancing and the 21-day national lockdown in view of the Covid 19 outbreak, the need of the hour is for wedding celebrations to tone down. And the government's order to allow weddings, but with a guest list of 30 has caused many couples to either postpone or proceed with a bunch of compromises though.
Studio 31, a wedding photography company based out of Chennai, captured one such wedding for the couple, Sweatha and Aswin. They rather had a very interesting experience. With an initial guest expectancy for their wedding to about 1000 people, the couple limited their guests to just 30 people, including the camera crew. They also called off their wedding reception, owing to safety concerns. They had included several safety measures at the venue, put up posters for people to sit distantly, sanitizers on every table and very hygienic and sterile food service.
Pranesh Padmanabhan, Founder of Studio 31 said, "The wedding industry has taken a major hit. Shrinking guest lists, brides and grooms stuck in different cities, vendor cancellations, loss of huge sums of money -- a day as special as this is now a victim of fear and uncertainty. At Studio 31, we have adopted several measures and made it a priority to look out for our team, our clients and the whole community in dark times like this. While remote work policy has been enforced across all the departments, we are making it a mandate to follow WHO issued standards across all our processes. We have canceled shoots in cities where the virus has made a huge dent, as our photographer's health and well-being is a priority."
When it comes to weddings, families go all in and invest a lot into their big day -- Catering, venue, decoration and more. In the last one month, apart from wedding photography, several related businesses and services have been impacted very significantly. Several last-minute cancellations, rescheduling and refund chaos and more. Studio 31 has seen more than 14 cancellations in the last week, as 85% of our clients stay abroad and travel to India for their wedding.
Work from home is not an option here as well. Not just for wedding photographers, but also the post-production teams. Though the pre-production, production and post-production teams of Studio 31 work on the cloud, several client meetings happen throughout the day, wherein they sit with their editors for their photo and video deliverables. This has resulted in a huge loss of productivity and backlogs and also loss of operational revenue. So, work from home for the services and experience industry is not an efficient way.
Fearing the spread of infection at weddings, several caterers are canceling orders much in advance. Even wedding halls have been very stringent with their clients to postpone or cancel weddings at their venues. Photographers, cinematographers, crew members are avoiding shoots even for confirmed events, leading to a 100% loss for the company.
The only silver lining here is technology. Studio 31 reported a surge for live streaming services at weddings and functions, with people opting for virtual celebrations, either on Google Hangouts, FaceTime, Skype, Zoom, among others.
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Source :Studio 31
