PITTSBORO — Saturday, March 28, was supposed to be a special date for Hannah Christenberry.
Long before the coronavirus pandemic, Christenberry and her fiance, Taylor Holden, had selected the last Saturday in March as the day they’d be married. But COVID-19, of course, forced them to cancel the March date and postpone the wedding plans they’d been making for months.
“It breaks my heart,” said the bride-to-be. “ My mother and I always looked forward to planning my wedding together when the time was right.”
Christenberry and Holden still plan to exchange wedding vows, though the wedding will be a few months later than they originally envisioned.
With the help of wedding planner Cheryl-Ann Kast, who operates Kast Events and Company in Pittsboro, the couple moved the date of their wedding to August 8.
Except for the changed date, the wedding is now planned much the same as it had been. Kast even secured the same wedding venue — The Parlour At Manns Chapel in Chapel Hill — that the couple had booked for March 28.
Couples like Hannah and Taylor aren’t alone. Other soon-to-be-wed couples who had their hearts set on a spring wedding date, with all plans in place, are understandably upset.
So for Kast, the last few weeks have been a whirlwind of rescheduling weddings that had long ago been planned.
Kast is offering her clients the assistance they need in rescheduling their springtime weddings to late summer and fall dates. Some of the couples with whom she has worked have already rescheduled their big day — some for late summer, others early fall. Some of her clients have scaled back plans, opting for a smaller wedding, while other couples continue with a very simplified wedding at the local courthouse and plan for a reception celebration in late summer-fall. Other couples are still deciding how to move forward.
To reschedule, Kast has asked her clients to choose preferred weekend dates during late summer and fall. Then she contacts venues to check on availability for dates selected. Once the date is locked in with a venue, Kast lines up caterers, beverage service providers, photographers and florist designers. This is the first tier necessary to reschedule a wedding. Additional planning details continue after these details are reserved.
Kast, busy now meeting her clients’ needs in the midst of sudden changes brought on by the coronavirus pandemic and the need to maintain social distancing, didn’t plan to pursue wedding planning as a career.
She chose a culinary career instead.
Born and raised in South Africa, Kast earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Culinary Arts from the Institute of Culinary Arts (ICA) in Stellenbosch, South Africa. She later honed her culinary skills in London, where she worked for six months as a pastry chef in the famous eatery Coq d’Argent. Her goal at the time was to gain as much experience as she could working at several other notable European restaurants, including stints as a pastry chef at the Lambs of Stratford-Upon-Avon and the World Service Restaurant in Nottingham.
After amassing more culinary experience in England, Kast returned home to be with her family, but because of a high crime rate in South Africa, she and her family relocated to Canada.
In 2006, Kast headed to the United States to join the AAA Five Diamond Fearrington House Restaurant.
Fearrington was a “great fit” for her, Kast said. She spent two years at Fearrington, working in the kitchen before she became the restaurant’s Catering Manager and Weddings and Special Events Manager.
She married Alexander Kast, the director of Chapel Hill Creamery. The couple lives in Pittsboro, where they’re raising their children, a daughter and son.
In 2015, she launched her own business, establishing Kast Events & Company.
She and her team of wedding planners have since helped many couples plan their special day.
“I am proud to say I am in good company with a team of assistants and hand-selected vendors that are truly the area’s best,” Kast said.
In normal times, her business has gotten great feeback from clients.
“As mother of the bride, planning my first wedding ever in a city where none of us lived, I was intimidated and worried about my ability to pull it off,” said Shannon Mcfayden, one of Kast’s clients. “In my first phone call with Cheryl-Anne Kast, I knew I had found our planner. In a word, she is amazing.”
Mcfayden said Kast “and everyone on her team, are so organized, helpful, creative, responsive and calm under pressure. They worked really hard to get to know us and then to personalize the whole experience to our desires, with an unbelievable attention to detail and execution. And they made it fun for us every step of the way.”
And in recent weeks, she’s helped folks who’s wedding plans have been altered by COVID-19 concerns get their plans back on track.
While the postponement of her March 28 wedding created some hurdles, Christenberry said that thanks to Kast’s help, the event shouldn’t be much different than previously planned, just delayed, with Kast rebooking the same venue, same caterer and other details.
In easing the burden of rescheduling their spring nuptials until later summer, Kast “was extremely helpful,” Christenbery said.
Randall Rigsbee contributed to this story.