“People have been planning for a long time, and a lot of people have put weddings off for a long time.”
Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly has said he thinks there will “good news on weddings today” as he hinted at today being “important” for brides and grooms.
Donnelly was speaking ahead of a Cabinet meeting this morning, where ministers will discuss the possibility of increasing the number of guests allowed at wedding ceremonies from 50 to 100 in August.
On his way into the meeting Donnelly told reporters that there may be “something positive to say” in regards to weddings on Tuesday.
“I don’t want to preempt Cabinet, but I think we’ll have good news on weddings today,” he said.
“It’s a relatively small number of people, but for all those brides out there and dare I say some grooms out there it is an important day.
“People have been planning for a long time, and a lot of people have put weddings off for a long time.”
It comes as a procession of brides is set to protest in Dublin city today to call for the cap on the number of guests permitted at weddings to be raised to 100.
The large group of brides-to-be will form a procession from the Department of Health on Baggot Street on Tuesday at 12pm before travelling to Government Buildings to present their health and safety guidelines.
The brides will be presenting a centrepiece of 40 pages of guidelines “to seek to safely raise the guest limit for wedding receptions to 100 guests” from next month.
The protest has been organised by the Wedding International Professionals Association (WIPA), which claims the recommendations will enable weddings of 100 people to go ahead in a manner that is “safe for both staff and guests.”
WIPA President, Tara Fay, said on Monday: “We need to provide certainty for couples and our industry as to what is happening in August.
“There are tens of thousands of people in this country whose livelihoods utterly depend on weddings – they need to know if they are going to have a job come September.’’
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