Others are watching as another blaze tears through the Grampians National Park, where a number of popular wedding spots are located.

Sadly, experiences like theirs are becoming more common as the frequency and severity of natural disasters climbs in Australia.

The CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology’s State of the Climate Report 2024 found that natural disasters are becoming more common and more severe, with heavy rainfall, floods and fires.

”When something like this happens, it’s devastating,” Darcy Allen, Senior Wedding Planner at Easy Weddings, told 9news.com.au.

She knows multiple brides who are anxiously waiting to see if their Grampians venues will survive the bushfires and is on standby to support them if the worst happens.

Most venues include a force majeure clause in wedding contract which removes liability when unforeseen or unavoidable catastrophes – like natural disasters – prevent the venue from fulfilling its obligations.

This clause is designed to protect the venue and couples when disaster strikes, allowing the contract to be broken without penalty in most cases.

But Allen warns that if the area where the venue is located is “already deemed a flood region or a fire prone zone, sometimes force majeure won’t cover that”.

In that case, there may be a financial penalty for couples who want to break contract and relocate their wedding.

“There’s things that come out of your control, regardless of where the venue is located,” she added. “The reality is a fire or flood can happen anywhere.”

Some venues may also retain the right to keep any deposits which have already been paid even in the case of a natural disaster.

Wedding planners or concierge services like Easy Weddings can step in to help couples find a new venue to host their nuptials when disaster strikes and organise for vendors and suppliers to move their services to the new place and time.

Couples organising their nuptials themselves can work directly with their original venue to see if there are other options nearby with dates available but it can be a slow process.

“Usually the venue will do their best to provide a solution but in this scenario where it’s a natural disaster, obviously that that venue has many couples on their hands, they’ve got insurance claims, they’ve got damages,” Allen said.

The wedding industry has become very good at changing wedding venues and dates on short notice since the COVID-19 pandemic kicked off in 2020.

Tens of thousands of weddings had to be moved due to lockdowns and travel bans, forcing wedding venues, vendors and suppliers to become more flexible.

And it’s not just natural disasters or global health crises that force couples to change wedding venues or dates, so it pays for wedding providers to be adaptable.

“It’s actually quite common to move wedding venues and or dates to suit whatever’s going on in the world,” Allen said.

”My wedding venue flooded a couple of weeks before … a pipe burst, and it actually flooded the room, and it had warped all of the floorboards.”

Allen was able to marry in a different room at the same venue while the space she had originally booked underwent repairs.

Sadly, that won’t be an option for any Aussies who had been considering tying the knot at the Little Desert Nature Lodge.