Fire-stricken wedding industry in Fallbrook still strong

By: TOM PFINGSTEN - Staff Writer
Damage leads to lost business; recovery expected | Sunday, December 30, 2007 10:10 PM PST ∞

FALLBROOK ---- The business of attracting lovebirds to tie the knot in Fallbrook faces acute short-term challenges brought on by October's wildfire, but it looks poised to continue as strong as ever in the long run, officials said this week.

While thousands of dollars' worth of business was lost during the week of the fire, couples are now lining up to wed in 2008 at The Grand Tradition, Los Willows and Pala Mesa, with the latter two having suffered severe fire damage in the Rice blaze.

The fire damage has resulted in some of the most serious problems for the industry in years, but organizers are still booking events for summer after cleanup and renovation efforts are complete.

"The wedding industry is still extremely strong," said Don McDougal, who managed The Grand Tradition for several decades before handing the reins to his son Scott last year. "We're in very, very good shape, and in talking to other people in the industry, that looks fairly typical."

McDougal said his family's iconic wedding facility hosted 210 ceremonies in 2007, up 19 percent from the 177 weddings performed at the sprawling South Mission Road property in 2006.

By contrast, only 137 weddings were performed there in 2005, the year before McDougal unveiled a second ceremony and reception site on the northwest side of the property called "Arbor Terrace."

"It's a growing industry," he said. "We're seeing more and more people who are getting out of the church wedding with a reception in the church hall next door. We already know pretty well what our 2008 is going to look like, because we book a year out. It looks like it's going to be a tremendous year."

About five miles east, things don't look so peachy, at least in the near future.

"We had nine events during the month of December that had to be canceled," said Al Ransom, who owns and operates Los Willows with his wife, Cathy. "Three of them were weddings, and we relocated them. The other six were mainly Christmas parties, and we just lost those."

The Rice fire was the most devastating wildfire in Fallbrook's history, burning 9,000 acres and 206 homes after igniting east of Interstate 15 in the early hours of Oct. 22.

Los Willows is located off Stewart Canyon Road, near where the blaze was started by a downed power line.

Ransom estimated that 35 of the facility's 44 acres were burned during the Rice fire, although no buildings were destroyed.

Still, telephone and electricity service was down for weeks after the fire, and Los Willows won't reopen for weddings until February.

"The bottom line is, it shut us down," he said.

But the closure isn't permanent, pointed out his wife, Cathy Ransom, and neither is it all bad, she said.

"We're taking this opportunity to do a massive face lift," she said. "We've taken a negative and turned it into a positive."

Across Interstate 15, a popular wedding site at Pala Mesa Resort was saved by firefighters during the October blaze, only to be hit with a mudslide during recent heavy rains, McDougal said.

Ransom said he is optimistic about the long-term outlook for Fallbrook's wedding industry, despite the fire damage and having to battle with his insurance company for compensation.

"San Diego County is a very popular area for weddings," he said. "Normally, in Orange County, the prices are so high that people are finding it cheaper to bring their guests down here and put them up in a resort than to have the wedding up north, because they save so much money.

"When things are going right, we should do 100 weddings a year."

Ransom said the downturn in the national and regional economies will probably make a dent in the wedding industry.

"Let's face it, as the economy goes, people tighten up the pocket books, too, and that's had some impact on weddings," he said.

Scott McDougal, the current general manager at The Grand Tradition, sounded more optimistic, pointing out that the picturesque mansion, which attracts the most weddings each year, doesn't have a Saturday night free until December 2008.

"The fact that we're as full as we want to be is a good sign," said the younger McDougal. "I'm already booking into 2009 and 2010."

Meanwhile, for the resorts on the town's eastern edges recovering from the devastating wildfire, operators are looking forward to the day when things are back to normal.

"We've had brides saying, 'The ambience coming into your place isn't as nice as it was,'" Ransom said, referring to the hundreds of acres of charred landscape surrounding Los Willows. "That's something I can't help. I can't control what it looks like around us."

Contact staff writer Tom Pfingsten at (760) 740-3516 or tpfingsten@nctimes.com.