Couples 'Wedcast' Takes Destination Weddings Home

By Adam Kirby -- Hotels, 9/1/2007

Couples Resorts of Jamaica is now offering Webcast technology for its bustling destination wedding business. Cleverly dubbed “Wedcasts,” the program allows brides and grooms to share their momentous occasion with friends and family unable to make the trip to Caribbean via the Internet.

For an additional US$375 fee, Couples Resorts creates a dedicated Web page for the wedding wherein family and friends back home can login and watch a live feed of the ceremony. Couples contracts with Negril-based Island Multimedia Solutions to produce the Wedcasts. (Island Multimedia charges at least US$500 for the service on its own, and up to US$2,150 when four cameras are employed.) Specialized capture cards record the proceedings, and directional antennas beam the broadband signal back to the beach, cabana, gardens, or wherever the wedding is being held.

Couples has been piloting the Wedcasts for the past year, during which time it has had about 50 couples request a Wedcast, says Randy Russell, Couples senior vice president and chief romance officer. “Every single one of the Wedcasts has been very well received. It is just a way of being able to include more guests that would not be able to attend the wedding otherwise.”

Russell does not figure the Wedcasts themselves will ever be a significant revenue source for Couples’ four Jamaica resort properties, but in giving engaged couples the option to present their weddings for a sick grandparent, for example, or a friend unable to get away from work, Russell hopes more couples that are undecided about splurging for a destination wedding do so. Wedcasts will be a focus of the marketing effort by Couples’ newly created wedding coordination department.

Of course, the company has to be careful not to make the Wedcasts too appealing. After all, Couples is in the business of hotelkeeping. “Obviously, we would rather have more people from the wedding party stay in the hotels than not,” Russell says. “So we have to be careful how we promote it. But we know that not everybody is able to make it.”