South Yorkshire wedding industry hopes for "light at the end of the tunnel" in PM's roadmap
Businesses want ceremonies included in plans to ease lockdown
South Yorkshire's wedding industry is hoping for "light at the end of the tunnel" when we hear more about lockdown easing from the Prime Minister next week.
A UK taskforce for marriage businesses is urging Boris Johnson to include it in his roadmap to easing restrictions on Monday.
It's calling for a minimum of 50 guests to make events financially viable and more support like grants.
Nicola Smith runs You Said Yes which plans wedding across South Yorkshire - she says couples and businesses need certainty about the future:
"With seemingly no end to this tunnel, and no light at the end of it, it's a bit hard to plan what to do next but once there is some sort of roadmap initiated people can plan and it's easier to plan than to have something sprung on you at the last minute.
"The wedding industry is a much-forgetten industry during this pandemic and I don't think enough has been done to sustain all these small businesses and there has been no roadmap as such for the wedding industry itself.
"It'd be nice to think the Prime Minister had intentions to top off some of these issues at the next roadmap."
Weddings haven't been allowed during any of England's three national lockdowns, apart from in exceptional cases.
Last year some ceremonies went ahead when restrictions were eased but limits on guest numbers never reached more than thirty.
Nicola isn't hopeful for any more than that to be allowed until at least the summer but she tells us there are ways that weddings can go ahead safely:
"If people can actually go shopping to the local supermarket with 50 to 100 strangers wearing a mask and hand santiser on the way in, all socially distanced, then I don't think it's any great hardship to police that in a wedding setting. If 30 are still allowed for a funeral I don't see much difference to 30 people being allowed to gather at a wedding.
"People do need to get a little bit of normality back and, whether people realise it or not, love is not cancelled, weddings are not cancelled and the wedding industry itself is absolutely crippled by what's happened and people do need to plan - they need to have some light at the end of the tunnel."
Boris Johnson will set out his roadmap for easing restrictions on Monday, with changes possibly kicking in from 8th March when the government hopes to start reopening schools.
The Prime Minister's already suggested schools will be followed by non-essential shops reopening and then hospitality.