It is with much sadness that we announce that Taranaki Weddings will not be running the Taranaki Weddings Industry Awards in 2021.
This has been a difficult decision to make with lots of factors to take into consideration – we know many of our local Vendors, and their clients, will be as disappointed with this decision as we are.
The Taranaki Weddings Industry Awards has, since it’s inception in 2016, been an opportunity for our local Wedding Community to come together in celebration. The Taranaki Weddings Industry Awards were established to give local Wedding Vendors the opportunity to showcase and celebrate their hard work and achievements, to give them something to work towards, to raise the bar in terms of customer service and product/service delivery and to celebrate businesses who to strive for excellence in what they do. It has been our honour to facilitate and celebrate the achievements of so many local Wedding Vendors over the past 5 years, we’ve watched with pride as many businesses have shown growth and development as they strived to win. We very much look forward to doing so again in the future.
It’s important to us that we communicate not only our disappointment and our sadness in making this decision, but also our reasons for doing so, in the hope that our Wedding Community will understand that this is not a decision that has been made lightly.
The past 12 months have been a challenging time for the Weddings and Events Industry – here at Taranaki Weddings, we’ve felt the pressure and strain, as many of you have also, and feel enormous relief and pride to still be standing, despite the hurdles that we have encountered. As many of you will know we not only had to postpone the Taranaki Weddings Show last year, but we also had to firstly postpone and downscale the awards night followed by then cancelling the event with just two weeks’ notice due to a sudden change in Alert Levels.
As many of you will also know – the Taranaki Weddings Industry Awards is not, and never has been, run for profit. We rely solely on the ticket sales from the Awards Night to facilitate the running of the Awards process and event and for the provision of the awards themselves – last year’s event cancellation meant not only did our team face the same disappointment as all our nominees but that, financially, Taranaki Weddings was impacted. And while the future definitely looks brighter, potential Alert Level changes remain a threat to the Event Industry and having to cancel a second Awards Night would not just have a financial impact to our business – but a devastating impact to our morale and our community.
Many Wedding Vendors, both here in Taranaki and across the country and indeed, across the world, have faced significant challenges due to the ongoing pandemic. We know many of you have experienced, through no fault of your own decreased bookings and multiple cancellations that have affected not only your bottom lines, but your morale and your drive to continue also. This has been the deciding factor in making our decision.
The 2020/21 season has not been an even playing field, with so many vendors losing bookings and momentum, it would not be fair to go ahead with the awards after such a trying year and wedding season. 2021 is not the year to compete against each other for a trophy after so many of you have been competing just to keep your businesses open. It is not the year to award one winner in a single category when so many of you deserve an award for your resilience and determination. 2021 is the year to celebrate collaboration and community. It is the year to celebrate our own and each other’s achievements and to come together in joint support and celebration as one.
Taranaki Weddings celebrates a significant milestone this year, which we hope many of you will be able to celebrate with us and we look forward to sharing more information with you about that soon. But for now, we want to convey our gratitude to our clients and the local community for their ongoing support of Taranaki Weddings – of our events, the awards and the community we have worked so hard to build and support. Our long-term success is only possible because of the continued support of our clients who have advertised with us and the thousands of people who have attended our events. We are as committed to our Wedding Community and our values now as we were when we purchased the business almost 7 years ago and we look forward to re-launching the Taranaki Weddings Awards in 2022.
With much love and gratitude,
Gavin and Louise Campbell – Owners of Taranaki Weddings