An Interview with Wedding Experts

Arguably two of the most important aspects of a wedding are the food and the flowers. Guests will rave (or rant) about the food they were served at a wedding long after the bells have stopped pealing for the couple, and the flowers featured in wedding photos that will grace the happy pair’s hallways for decades to come.

Eric Edwards has been working at Tigh-Na-Mara Resort for 32 years. “I worked my way up from sous chef to executive chef, and I'm now responsible for the food in parts of the resort,” he says. He works with local ingredients as much as possible and changes the menus with the season to ensure dishes are using the freshest ingredients available. Whether he’s organizing food for one of the restaurants on site or prepping for a wedding, the result is the same: high quality food full of local flavour that will leave a lasting impression on guests.

Eric thinks of weddings like a theatre production: one chance for many moving parts to go right. “We do a lot of weddings, we’re passionate about them. But it’s your theatre production,” he says. “We’re here to make it work and shine, and we put the passion and entire team into it. We make it truly to your vision.”

Karen Kuzbik from Petal and Kettle is also an expert at helping couples turn their wedding dreams into reality with their floral arrangements. “We help bring their vision to life with different colours and flowers and come up with new ideas that you might not have ever thought of before, ” Karen says. “And someone might come with a crazy idea, and then you get to really curate it and bring it to life for them. So that's really fun.”

As florists, Petal and Kettle is constantly working alongside other wedding vendors to help create magical wedding days. This familiarity with each other benefits the couples, too. “We get to know each other very well. We see the same people at the weddings and we understand how the different vendors work together, from florists to the resorts to photographers, all of that,” Karen explains. This helps couples create a wedding that is cohesive and runs smoothly when multiple vendors have to work with and around each other.

With the idyllic backdrop of ocean, forest and sky, there are numerous options for both indoor and outdoor weddings in the Parksville Qualicum Beach region, but regardless of your style and preferences, there are wedding vendors who can create magic for your special day. Chefs like Eric and florists like Karen thrive in their jobs because they truly love what they do—helping couples celebrate the biggest day of their lives together.