Wedding & Event venue John Michael’s Banquet on Upper’s Lane in Thorold has been hosting weddings for many years now, but when Covid-19 hit, the co-owner of the banquet hall, Robert Colavecchia, saw all upcoming wedding events cancelled or postponed.
Says Colavecchia, “It was very difficult. It’s kind of like your life shuts down for a year and a half. There was a little pocket last fall where we did a few events but aside from that, it wasn’t easy.”
With everything closed down Colavecchia says there wasn’t much he could do. “We did some renovations in the time being. We had to keep ourselves busy here but our staff was at home trying to find something else to do.”
With the restrictions loosening and tightening in the past year the banquet hall could allow for some wedding events to go through but in a much smaller capacity.
Says Colavecchia, “That’s been the hardest thing, that we don’t know from one week to the next what’s going to happen. With a wedding there are so many other vendors involved. We’re talking DJ and flowers, decorator, photographers. So all of sudden things shut down and the brides are crushed. We try to sit down with them and show them what we can do and then they have to talk with their vendors and make it work. It’s fluid, you just got to keep going with it and keep making adjustments.”
Now that restrictions are loosening bigger weddings are happening again but Colavecchia says things are not back to normal just yet. “Right now restrictions are a bit looser but they’re still in place. At the end of the day people feel more comfortable being out now after a year of the pandemic. I’d say of the (weddings) that are supposed to happen now, 50% are pushed to next year and some are going ahead at a smaller number (of guests).”
For Colavecchio it’s been a joy to have John Michael’s Banquet open its doors to celebrate young bridal pairs again.
Says Colavecchio, “It’s been great. Actually even the guests have been saying that. To be able to be doing this again, it’s been absolutely terrific.”
Still, Colavecchia hopes there are better days ahead, saying, “There are still some brides that are tentative, not knowing, with the delta variant out there, what is going to happen. We’re trying to keep it positive but there’s still that scare right now of what might happen. We have to keep moving forward and finding a way to be safe and move forward.”
