Steamboat Landing Park in Belfast has hosted many city-approved events over the years, including concerts, plays, art fairs and ultimate Frisbee games. Now an outdoor wedding attended by at least 125 guests will join the list.
The City Council on Tuesday night approved a last-minute request from the couple, whose previous wedding venue fell through, to hold their ceremony at the park’s gazebo on Aug. 31 — where they had also gotten engaged. After some debate, the council ultimately approved the request in a 4-1 vote.
The lone dissenting vote came from Councilor Mary Mortier, who argued that the $50 fee proposed by the city parks department was too low, especially when the couple was also renting the nearby privately owned Belfast Yacht Club and Event Center for their reception after the 5 p.m. ceremony.
“A $50 fee for use of the public’s park is so unacceptable to me,” Mortier said. “So unacceptable. These are people who, over a year ago, rented the Belfast Yacht Club facility for their wedding reception. Two days, beaucoup wedding bucks. We are stewards of the citizens of Belfast, and city properties. This is opening Pandora’s box and setting a precedent.”
City officials were caught off-guard by the request, raising questions about how much hosting events in the waterfront park is worth, especially when they are using public space for private purposes.
There have been small pop-up weddings held at the gazebo in the past, but nothing on the scale of the one that was approved, according to Parks and Recreation Director Pam Salokangas.
Salokangas noted that her department has been considering implementing a regular fee schedule for weddings in anticipation of more couples requesting to hold them.
“This is nontraditional, we do not have a fee for this, so I placed a fee inside of that memo at $50 originally for that five-hour period,” Salokangas said. “But I do know there’s concern. This is a private thing that we don’t typically do.”
The proposed wedding will last an estimated two hours — down from five that was originally planned — with the couple using some electricity from the gazebo and playing light music through Bluetooth speakers. It will be attended by an estimated 125 to 140 guests. The organizers have event insurance, and Salokangas said they were notified that the park and harbor walk would still be open to the public during the ceremony.
Although the majority of councilors agreed to approve this one wedding, they were in agreement that the fee was too low for future cases, especially given the high number of people populating an open city space and bringing in benches for the ceremony.
Other council members offered various arguments in favor of the decision, with Neal Harkness suggesting that it was good the couple asked permission ahead of time, and Chris Bitely characterizing the approval as “an experiment, not a precedent.”
“This isn’t the way to do it, ideally, 11 days before the event, I think we all know that,” Bitely said. “I feel like it’s a safe experiment. Worst-case scenario, we get stuck resodding or something, so I feel OK with it.”
Councilor Brenda Bonneville said it would be unfair to set a higher price now, after the proposed fee of $50 had already been mentioned.
“I wouldn’t like to have you 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’ve been a little bit different, but at this point, I think it would be unfair.”
Meanwhile, Councilor Paul Dean suggested that some members of the public might be interested in watching the wedding happening in the park.
