A homeworking agent is hunting for a wedding venue with availability after her clients saw their big day cancelled when P&O Cruises suspended operations due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Travel-pa homeworker Suda Gray (pictured), who has been working in travel for 33 years, had booked the couple and their guests into 10 cabins on P&O Cruises’ Oceana for a sailing from Malta on August 6.
However, after the line cancelled the seven-day cruise as a result of Covid-enforced rescheduling, Gray started looking for UK venues to save her customers’ wedding.
She said: “We have looked in Wales, the Isle of Wight and Norfolk. It’s hard as all the guests are vegetarian. It’s not straightforward.”
Gray, a wedding and honeymoon specialist, is confident her long-standing customers Dilesh Patel and Rupal Patel will book their wedding with her – but called on suppliers to help her find a venue.
Gray, whose agency business is called Luxury Inspire Me Travel, added: “We will get there in the end. We’re still looking. The problem is the registry office. There is very little availability at the moment.”
She said P&O Cruises has refunded six of the 10 cabins with the remaining four choosing to rebook with the line before 2022. The original cruise booking was worth £27,000.
More: Couples raise 2021 travel spend after Covid throws weddings and honeymoons into disarray
Eight of the best secluded honeymoon destinations
Gray, of Rayne, Essex, added: “The couple had the rings with the dates showing the time of the wedding on it. Everything was prepared. They had bought everything. I’d arranged everything on the ship in terms of the food. I had done such a lot of preparation but unfortunately it got cancelled.
“They can’t get anything at sea until April, so they don’t know what to do now. They’re going to get married in a registry office, but they wanted to get married at sea.”