To the Honorable Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham:

We are writing to request guidance and change for New Mexico wedding businesses that are falling through the cracks with the current executive orders. Our state’s wedding industry has been deeply impacted by the COVID-19 epidemic. We sympathize with and appreciate you following a data-driven, logical approach to controlling the spread.

Currently, New Mexico's many wedding venues are adhering to the "mass gatherings" restrictions set to no more than 5 persons. This has had a deep economic impact on our industry, financially affecting nearly all of our 1,627 wedding-related businesses in New Mexico. As a result of these limitations, couples are moving weddings to other locations, sometimes in unsafe ways.

To better clarify this financial impact, the average cost of a wedding in New Mexico is $16,584, and with an average of nearly 13,700 couples marrying in New Mexico each year, this generates approximately $227M dollars in revenue for our state. New Mexico has a significant wedding industry that is often not seen or discussed as a whole because each vendor in the industry is viewed as a sub-category of other industries. Due to the restrictions placed on each industry that each vendor has to follow, weddings of any sort have become nearly impossible to have. This not only impacts thousands of small business owners and their families, but also the state's revenue. Because this data does not include the 22% of New Mexico weddings that come from out-of-state (due to travel restrictions), our wedding community is relying completely on the opportunity for local weddings to take place with appropriate precautions, safety, and guidelines in place.

Therefore, for reasons of public safety and economic security, we are requesting that the State consider applying a set of safety protocols to the wedding industry, as has been done with restaurants, churches, and other sectors; and we offer our commitment to participate in the process of ensuring compliance with recommended protocols. We respectfully ask that weddings be allowed up to 25% of each venue’s indoor seating capacity or 50% of each venue’s outdoor seating capacity.

New Mexico wedding venues and vendors alike would gladly follow all applicable orders and training protocols already in place for restaurants and churches and apply them to weddings for their couples, vendors, and staff. This would certainly include following all regulations regarding appropriate social distancing, the wearing of protective face coverings, and a ban on dancing. With these orders in place, we can regulate weddings, which will thwart the further emergence of unregulated wedding gatherings, creating a safe, monitored environment for wedding participants and vendors, while also allowing for proper contact tracing.

We need a reopening plan now, we need to get our industry back to work and we need a transition time for training with our staff, suppliers, vendors, and wedding couples. Sign our petition today to reach our elected officials, implore them to hear our requests and help us get New Mexico wedding venues reopened!

Sincerely,

The New Mexico Wedding Community

To contact and for more information:

Maura Jane Photography, info@maurajanephotography.com

Wedding Collective New Mexico, hello@weddingcollectivenm.com