Belfast’s Steamboat Landing Park has hosted many city-sanctioned events over the years, including concerts, plays, art fairs and games of ultimate Frisbee, and now an outdoor wedding with a minimum of 125 guests is being added to the list.
The City Council on Tuesday night approved a last-minute request from the couple, whose previous wedding venue had fallen through, to hold the Aug. 31 ceremony at the park’s gazebo – where they also got engaged. After some debate, the council finally approved the request by a vote of 4 to 1.
The lone dissenting vote came from Councilwoman Mary Mortier, who argued that the $50 fee proposed by the city’s parks department was too low, especially since the couple had also rented the nearby, privately owned Belfast Yacht Club and Event Center for their 5 p.m. reception after the ceremony.
“A $50 fee to use the public park is completely unacceptable to me,” Mortier said. “Simply unacceptable. These are people who rented the Belfast Yacht Club facility for their wedding reception over a year ago. Two days, a lot of wedding money. We are stewards of the citizens of Belfast and city property. This opens Pandora’s box and sets a precedent.”
City officials were surprised by the request and it raises questions about the value of hosting events in the waterfront park, especially when public space is being used for private purposes.
There have been small, spontaneous weddings at the pavilion in the past, but none on the scale of the approved wedding, said Parks and Recreation Director Pam Salokangas.
Salokangas noted that her department was considering introducing a regular fee schedule for weddings as more couples were requesting to conduct such weddings.
“This is unusual, we don’t charge for this, so in the memo I included a fee of $50 originally for this five-hour period,” Salokangas said. “But I know there are concerns. This is a private matter that we don’t normally do.”
The planned wedding is expected to last two hours – instead of the five originally planned – with the couple drawing some power from the gazebo and playing light music through Bluetooth speakers. An estimated 125 to 140 guests are expected. Organizers have event insurance and Salokangas said they have been informed that the park and harbor promenade will remain open to the public during the ceremony.
Although the majority of councillors approved this one wedding, there was a consensus that the fee was too low for future cases, especially given the large number of people who populated an open city space and brought benches for the ceremony.
Other council members offered different arguments for the decision. Neal Harkness said it was good that the couple had asked for permission in advance, and Chris Bitely called the approval “an experiment, not a precedent.”
“This is not the right way to go 11 days before the event, we all know that,” Bitely said. “I think it’s a safe experiment. Worst case scenario, we’ll have to re-lay the turf or something, so I’m OK with that.”
Councilwoman Brenda Bonneville said it would be unfair to set a higher price now after the proposed $50 fee had already been mentioned.
“I don’t want you to say, ‘Oh, actually it’s five hundred dollars or even fifty-one dollars,'” Bonneville told Salokangas. “I think you said what you said and maybe it could have been a little bit different, but at this point I think it would be unfair.”
Meanwhile, City Councilman Paul Dean said some residents might be interested in watching the wedding in the park.
