The impact of the pandemic has led to a Cornish family business launching a new type of wedding entertainment, which can be enjoyed by guests at a wedding as well as absent friends and relatives.

Truro-based CherryTop Weddings has developed an interactive guest experience that meets Covid19 safety rules and can also be enjoyed at bigger weddings when the regulations allow them to take place again.

CherryTop Weddings has been developed by the family team behind Treasure Trails, a leisure business specialising in family entertainment.

“The original idea for CherryTop Weddings came from my brother’s wedding, where we created interactive booklets for guests with photographs, anecdotes and activities. The guests at his wedding absolutely loved it, with two engaged couples asking if we could do the same for them!” explains head of marketing Alex Ridd.

Coronavirus regulations look set to impact weddings until Summer 2021 at least, with numbers capped and guests not allowed to share items or mingle between family bubbles. This has made incorporating wedding day entertainment very challenging.

CherryTop Weddings gives couples a way of adding entertainment and intimacy to their day in a covid-secure way, while also ensuring that absent friends are able to be involved and feel included too. CherryTop Weddings has achieved ‘We’re good to go’ status, the official mark to signal that a tourism and hospitality business has met the Government’s Covid19 guidelines.

“Although the original idea for CherryTop Weddings came before coronavirus, we are very pleased that our product means that couples getting married now can incorporate our new and unique form of entertainment into their day in a covid-secure way. Each guest receives their own booklet and pen, and the entertainment is enjoyed at the table, with no requirement to move around,” says Alex Ridd.

Couples create their own booklet, ‘A Love Story’, using CherryTop Weddings’ bespoke, easy to use content management system. Couples add their own welcome and farewell messages, add their favourite photographs and choose from and personalise the activities for the booklet. Guests attending the wedding in person or virtually are given their own copy of ‘A Love Story’ and an accompanying personalised pen.

Guests will be able to upload their responses to the activities, photographs of the day and their messages and good wishes for the couple to an online interactive ‘Wedding Wall’, which will also contain an area for absent friends to watch a live stream of the wedding. The technology allows guests who are attending the wedding virtually to still feel as involved and included as in-person guests, by taking part in the same activities as well as by contributing their own content in real-time.

“We are optimistic that couples will be keen to embrace our innovative product. Also, at a time of great financial uncertainty, we are delighted that we have been able to take on new staff and are planning to recruit more colleagues in late spring”.

“Additionally, as the situation improves, we are especially keen to develop relationships with wedding venues and similar hospitality businesses, as well as wedding planners.”

“Although it has come about in an unexpected way, the creation of CherryTop Weddings has led to us developing working relationships with several new businesses; not just the software developers, but also a packaging and printing company. Such successful collaborations make us feel very hopeful for the future,” says Alex Ridd.

For more information, please visit www.cherrytopweddings.com