Area wedding vendors pull together to make the big day happen in the wake of the storm.
Melissa Miller, a pastry chef at Granny Schmidt's bakery in Whitehall Township, decorates a cake Friday afternoon.
It's taken some creativity, but the Lehigh Valley's wedding businesses have worked to keep nuptials on schedule despite Superstorm Sandy.
The storm Monday night into Tuesday wiped out power at Granny Schmidt's, which creates specialty and wedding cakes. The bakery ran on generator power until 9 p.m. Thursday, when service was restored. The pastry chef, Melissa Miller of West Easton, has been staying in a 34-foot-long recreational vehicle in the business’s parking lot because she has no power at her house.
“We go -- no matter,” Quier said.
Quier also owns The Farmhouse restaurant in Emmaus. A fire broke out at the restaurant Oct. 27, but it remained open until Sandy forced a closure. The restaurant was set to reopen Friday night.
“It’s been a rough week,” she said.
The bakery went through similar storm setbacks last year when it lost electricity. One of Quier's clients then was forced to cancel a wedding reception, but Quier still delivered the cake to the church.
Only one of her wedding cake clients had to reschedule the big day this year due to the storm. The bride was incredibly distraught, Quier said, but because the venue was still without power as the week drew to a close, the wedding had to be postponed until December.
Granny Schmidt's pastry chef Melissa Miller on Friday walks out of a recreational vehicle she is using to live in this week.
Linda Nabb, wedding planner and owner of Dream Events in Northampton, loaned the RV to Quier after she stopped by the bakery to check on the cakes for her weddings.
She said she saw Miller, the pastry chef, icing a cake with only a small light over her head. Miller shared that she was also without power at home and couldn't get warm anywhere.
“The light bulb went on,” Nabb said. Later, with her husband’s help, she delivered the RV to the bakery parking lot.
Nabb said that as of Friday, none of her weddings have been canceled. In fact, she said she hasn’t heard an anxious thought from any of her brides regarding storm setbacks. She said her venues for this weekend -- Iron Lakes Country Club in North Whitehall Township, Allentown Symphony Hall and Allentown Brew Works -- all had power Friday.
That's not to say Nabb's preparation has been without difficulty.
Her workshop is without power, so she has been hand-pressing linens for tables at her and a colleague’s homes. Helping Granny Schmidt's with the RV is just one of those things that come with being in the same line of work, she said.
At the Meadows Banquet Hall in Lower Saucon Township, power is not expected to be restored until Monday night. Staff have been preparing offsite for two weddings this afternoon, but are prepared to run everything using generators, employee Denise Rauh said.
"Grooms have been walking through with generators today," she said Friday amid chaos that also included late delivery of linens.
But even after all of the trouble, Rauh remained positive Friday.
"We usually have floods and lose power," she said. "This time we only lost power."