As restaurants and bars in North Texas adjust to state-mandated reductions in capacity to help reduce the spread of COVID-19, a long list of additional businesses are grappling with the same repeat adjustment.
"Our clients are asking us, and we're trying to maneuver through troubled waters," said Ricardo Tomás, member of the Society of Professional Wedding Professionals and co-founder of the wedding event planning business Lorraine Tomás.
Navigating the troubled waters of a pandemic has them lumped in with restaurants, movie theaters, gyms, libraries, and museums with rules for limiting the size of crowds.
The capacity reduction order went into effect Thursday after the North Texas region reported its seventh straight day with COVID-19 patients making up at least 15% of the hospitals' total capacity.
Businesses that were operating at 75% capacity must now go back down to 50% capacity. Bars must close under the order, and elective surgeries must cease.
In the last nine months, wedding planners have arranged smaller weddings, socially-distanced weddings, and even virtual weddings to abide by rules on any given day in any given Texas county or municipality.
"Kudos to the hospitality industry. I mean we've all had to really pivot to come up with new creative ways to have a safe wedding," said Rebecca Hackl of Lorraine Tomás.
And with a reduction back to 50% of a venue's capacity, they are forced to pivot again.
"This is something that none of us would ever think that we would ever go through in our lifetime," said Ricardo Tomás.
"Consumer confidence is really impacted when these types of changes happen," said Joe Monastero of the Texas Restaurant Association.
Restaurants and bars have been the obvious economic victims. The TRA's latest data estimates that 10,000 to 15,000 Texas restaurants have already closed during the pandemic and that between 500,000 and 600,000 restaurant employees are still out of work.
Monastero says that many Texas restaurants are already operating at 50% capacity with social distancing in mind.
"And for the last nine months have been going above and beyond to make sure that their dining rooms are safe and sanitized places for you to go and enjoy yourself," he said while pleading with Texas consumers to continue supporting the local businesses - with either to-go, delivery, or dining-in options - that they wish to see fully survive the pandemic.
So as the coronavirus restrictions change business, while asking consumers to continue helping them survive.
"People need this. They need the sense of togetherness," said Tomás. "So I believe that as long as everybody does their part, we should be fine."