Coronavirus: Navarra Venues chief will defy NSW rules on weddings

The boss of a wedding venue chain will ignore NSW rules and open up to ‘any numbers’.

Mitchell Coleman and Casey Girdham at Le Montage in Lilyfield, where their postponed wedding will be held. Picture: John Feder

One of Sydney’s largest wedding-venue chains will defy coronavirus restrictions and reopen, allowing wedding receptions “of any size” to proceed, seizing on government failures to police the massive Black Lives Matter rally crowds around the country at the weekend.

Navarra Venues chief executive Sal Navarra says he has had enough of dealing with “upset brides” and will direct his six venues­ to reopen, despite health rules, from next month.

Bride-to-be Casey Girdham, 26, was “over the moon” to hear the nuptials would be going ahead, saying she and fiance Mitchell Coleman, 24, would cop any fine for holding their wedding.

“I’m over the moon someone has finally stood up to the government for us brides,” Ms Girdham told The Australian.

“The government has no right to keep telling us what to do. Our guests should be allowed to attend our wedding if they understand the risk. Even my sick grandparents would go, they wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

Premier Gladys Berejiklian, however, said authorities would punish any business that broke the rules. “Let’s not forget — and I hate to remind people of this because­ it wasn’t a happy occasion for those involved — but a lot of the breakouts that happened in NSW were at events like ­weddings,” she said on Tuesday.

Mr Navarra said he would not be “cowed” by a $5000 on-the-spot fine for breaching health rules, citing the rally as proof the events industry could be given the green light to reopen.

“The event industry has patient­ly sat around waiting for the NSW government to give us the green light to fully reopen our doors and, to my frustration, we have been left behind,” he said.

“We don’t want to deal with upset brides any more (and) my sales team has had to receive daily calls from distressed brides, their wedding dates postponed for a second­ time.”

Ms Girdham and Mr Coleman are childhood sweethearts who were set to tie the knot at Mr ­Navarra’s Le Montage venue in Lilyfield, in Sydney’s inner west, in August and have postponed to November.

Mr Coleman said the health orders­ were “hypocritical” after thousands of people gathered to protest against indigenous ­incar­cer­ations and deaths in custody.

“Racism has no place in this world but it’s incredibly hypocrit­ical to allow thousands of people to stand shoulder-to-shoulder at a protest when weddings can’t go ahead,” he said.

Mr Navarra said his company had lost about $10m and had been forced to postpone up to 800 weddings because of the government’s coronavirus restrictions.

“We’ve had to lay off about 200 of our 500 staff because a lot of them aren’t covered by JobKeeper or have been with us for less 12 months,” he said. “We’ve postponed as many as 800 weddings and people have lost a lot of money.” He said he would consider “holding a rally with all the brides” in an effort to convince the government to ease restrictions.