Guyana’s Second Annual Wedding Expo opens this evening at the Roraima Duke Lodge in Kingston with the organizers of the event confidently predicting that visitors to the three-day event will exceed the 5,000 patrons who attended last year’s inaugural showcase of wedding apparel, accessories and services.
Chief Executive Officer of the Roraima Group of Companies Captain Gerry Gouveia who, along with Event Coordinators Annalisa Chan and Learie Barclay spoke with Stabroek Business earlier this week said that with the advent of the Wedding Expo Guyana had joined other Caribbean territories including Jamaica, Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago in affording business enterprises a major opportunity to market the various goods and services associated with weddings.
Up to late on Wednesday evening 64 booths had been booked by more than thirty 30 exhibitors, mostly small businesses including event planning, photography, bridal wear, invitations, jewellery and luxury transportation. Gouveia told Stabroek Business that for this year’s event the Roraima Group of Companies had honoured its commitment to pegging the cost of booth space to $20,000.00 per booth while new exhibitors will pay $30,000.00 per booth. “From Roraima’s standpoint the Wedding Expo is a goodwill gesture to the small business community. What the Wedding Expo does is to afford exhibitors the opportunity to attract their particular niche market. Our own responsibility is to facilitate them by assembling all of the goods and service providers in a quality facility and bringing the market to them.”
Among the local business houses that will participate in Wedding Expo 11 are two local commercial banks, Scotia and Republic banks, along with Courts Guyana Inc and Banks DIH Ltd. Gouveia told Stabroek Business that planning for the wedding expo took account of “much more” than the actual weddings. “One would expect that couples contemplating marriage might also be concerned with mortgages and home furnishings, hence the presence at the event of those types of businesses.”
Beyond the wedding expo itself a range of special events will be on offer, including cultural performances and fashion displays by Amerindian, African and Indian groups, while a lucky soon-to-be-married couple will cart off a special prize of a honeymoon in Jamaica sponsored by Caribbean Airlines and the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel.
Event Coordinator Chan, who holds a degree in Management from the University of Guyana, told Stabroek Business that the company had invested a great deal in terms of time and resources in the three-day event and that one of its key objectives was to ensure that successful outcomes arose out of the expected interaction between the exhibitors and couples contemplating marriage. “Of course we are also hoping that interest in the event will grow this year,” she added.
The Roraima Group of Companies is one of the leading service providers in the local tourism sector and Gouveia told Stabroek Business that through its Wedding Expo the company was seeking to further expand the frontiers of the industry. “In a sense what we are seeking to do through this event is to create more and new entrepreneurial opportunities in the tourism sector. Elsewhere in the Caribbean wedding tourism is already being developed through similar events. Hosting a single major event that focuses on weddings can also attract our nationals in the diaspora who are enthused by the idea of getting married at home. Part of the attraction of what we offer at our wedding expo is the opportunity to view apparel and services for various types of wedding ceremonies. Wedding Expo 11 has taken account of the various customs, cultures and traditions of our country,” Gouveia added.
Meanwhile Gouveia told Stabroek Business that he was hopeful that the attraction of getting married at home which the wedding expo holds for Guyanese in the diaspora would influence the authorities to amend national laws which require persons contemplating marriage to spend a relatively lengthy period in Guyana before they can secure a marriage licence. “There are other countries in the Caribbean that allow couples to marry after spending a much shorter time in the country and we believe that more overseas-based Guyanese and non-nationals might be encouraged to marry here if the law is changed,” Gouveia added.
Meanwhile the Roraima Chief Executive Officer told Stabroek Business that he believed that part of the attraction of the wedding expo was that it opened the rest of the local tourism industry to honeymoon tourism. “If the success of the wedding can extend into more visiting individuals and couples being married here it could open the way for significant honeymoon-related patronage of our hotels, night clubs, tourist attractions and interior resorts. Additionally, by bringing all of the wedding apparel and services into a single space we can persuade overseas visitors that it is entirely unnecessary to pursue the more costly option of importing things that are readily available in Guyana.
The event planners say that the wedding expo has now become an integral part of the Roraima Group’s event calendar and that planning for next year’s event will contemplate various other services associated with weddings. “Our hope for next year is that Wedding Expo 111 see an actual wedding ceremony as part of the event,” Gouveia told Stabroek Business.
