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A celebration of Sri Lanka’s wedding industry

Naveed Rozais

The Sri Lankan wedding is a grand affair (99% of the time anyway), and wanting to get that special day, or days, just right can be the stuff of nightmares for many a bride and groom. And this was before the complications of the pandemic. This is why the concept of the wedding fair takes root, it’s a magical day or two where you can essentially plumb through a physical directory of wedding vendors all in one place. You might find the florist of your dreams, or discover a completely new wedding dream altogether. The wedding industry took an incredibly harsh beating in the pandemic, one of the first things to be axed when times potentially infectious was the wedding. When a wedding is to be held, how many people you could invite depended on what was happening around you. For couples looking to get married, there was a lot of uncertainty, some pushed their weddings by a whole year and still found themselves restricted or having to postpone because of multiple lockdowns.

For those working in the wedding industry, it was doubly painful because of how severely their livelihoods were impacted. It is in response to this somewhat bleak situation that leading wedding magazine Brides of Sri Lanka announced its newest venture – Wedding Week 2022. 

From left: Galle Face Hotel President – Sales and Marketing Mubarak Gaffoor, ‘Brides of Sri Lanka’ Founder/Managing Director Nelum Haththella, SLTB Chairperson Kimarli Fernando, Galle Face Hotel General Manager Daniel Grua, and SriLankan Airlines Digital Communications and Social Media Manager Laskhika Gunatilake Photos credits Eshan Dasanayaka 

Speaking at a press conference held on Tuesday (8) to announce the event, Brides of Sri Lanka Founder and Managing Director Nelum Haththella said: “We hope to support the wedding industry that has greatly suffered in the last two years due to the global pandemic and also promote wedding tourism, which in turn will help our economy and our nation.”

The press conference also featured addresses from Galle Face Hotel General Manager Daniel Grua, Galle Face Hotel President – Sales and Marketing Mubarak Gaffoor, Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau (SLTB) Chairperson Kimarli Fernando, and SriLankan Airlines Digital Communications and Social Media Manager Laskhika Gunatilake. 

Nivedita Saboo

Taking place on 19 and 20 February, Wedding Week 2022 is organised by Brides Of Sri Lanka magazine together with the Galle Face Hotel. The SLTB, Sri Lanka Convention Bureau, and SriLankan Airlines have partnered with the event to support in view of promoting destination weddings in Sri Lanka to India and other prospective target markets.

Wedding Week 2022 is set to be the most exclusive wedding expo of the year, with exciting activities and a series of bridal shows on 19 and 20 February at the Galle Face Hotel. Four celebrated designers from India and the Maldives will showcase their collections alongside leading Sri Lankan designers at this event which is planned as a fun and interactive event for the couple to enjoy while planning their wedding. The international designers showcasing will include, Umang Hutheesing of the Hutheesing Design Company, award-winning Indian designer Nivedita, popular Maldivan designer AIshath Shamla, and Maldivian designer Aishath Shifza of Shif Couture.

Wedding Week 2022 will also feature “meet and greet” sessions with some of Sri Lanka’s best-loved wedding vendors and artists, and will also include some live demonstrations that showcase the vibrancy of Sri Lanka’s wedding industry.

Some of the household names taking part in Wedding Week 2022 include:

Wedding Week 2022 will also feature host “experiences” such as in food tasting, wine tasting, cake tasting, cocktail tasting, giveaways, jewellery shows, and entertainment shows and of course the much-awaited bridal shows with international and local designers presenting five shows per day. 

Shamla

The Brides of Sri Lanka magazine has organised this event to create a platform to uplift the Sri Lankan wedding industry and strengthen our foreign relationships. Brides of Sri Lanka is also launching its sister magazine in the Maldives, called Brides of the Maldives.

Explaining what sparked Wedding Week 2022, Haththella shared with Brunch that she created Wedding Week 2022 primarily to boost the wedding industry at the start of what hopes will be a great year for weddings. “In the last two years, the industry, and our fellow wedding suppliers have suffered greatly, especially with no destination weddings taking place. As a magazine, Brides of Sri Lanka has always been very supportive of the wedding industry, and we wanted to create a platform that could support the industry further. With lots of people coming in from overseas, now is the ideal time to do something of this nature.” 

Umang Hutheesingh

The pandemic, while it has impacted, has not dulled the grandeur and beauty, Hathtella shared, with couples still looking to celebrate their weddings as beautifully as possible in line with global wedding trends. “The capabilities of our suppliers have increased. The Sri Lankan wedding industry can deliver world-class services, our planners have geared themselves to do so, and we have the resources and talent. Lots of tourists are coming to Sri Lanka because they see its potential for destination weddings,” Haththella said, stressing that this is why the SLTB, Sri Lanka Convention Bureau, and SriLankan Airlines have both partnered with Wedding Week 2022 to create maximum impact regionally and globally.

“This is the first wedding expo we are planning on this scale. Wedding Week 2022 is a small step to where we’re heading with the future of weddings.” Haththella said, adding: “I am a patriot, and I want to give back to my country by showing what we are capable of. This is the right time to do this and give back not just to the wedding industry but to our country too.”

Wedding Week 2022 is free-of-charge and open to the public from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on 19 and 20 February at the Galle Face Hotel.