Bev Bedard: Wedding Queen

Tahoe gives me a feeling of belonging, of being part of something," says Bev Bedard. An active citizen and business leader for over 30 years, Bedard has headed up the North Lake Tahoe Chamber of Commerce (NLTCC), helped start numerous events and is currently leading the region's wedding industry.

In 1974, the Bedard family—Bev, her husband, Don, their 11th grade and 9th grade boys and 2-year-old daughter—relocated from urban Southern California to Tahoe. Having both been raised in Vermont, Bev and Don had decided to "get back to the mountains." They each resigned from their jobs at UCLA, where Bev was a medical histologist doing research on brain tissue and Don was a medical photographer. Making a huge career change, they established retail shops in Tahoe City and Squaw Valley.

"Bev has a love of Tahoe without exception," says Chuck Bluth—former owner of CalNeva resort in Crystal Bay—who has worked professionally with Bedard on various business endeavors since the 1980s.

"She's a strong woman," he says. "She knows the marketplace. She voices her opinion. And she knows how to deal with people."

"I loved my years at the chamber!" says Bedard with a wide smile. She became executive director of NLTCC at a crucial time in the area's history: 1980. The real estate market was fl at, and the pre-snowmaking drought years of the late 1970s were taking their toll on the ski resorts. She ran the chamber for 13 years.

Bedard's mandate was to create revenue-generating activities and events with broad appeal and to tackle the impacts of implementing the fi rst regional plan of the Tahoe Area Regional Planning Agency (TRPA). Under her leadership, NLTCC launched numerous events that are now Tahoe standards, including the Lake Tahoe Music Festival, Snowfest (now known as Snow Festival) and Autumn Food and Wine. During these years, Bedard also served on the TRPA's Consensus and Advisory Transportation committees and, with lodge owner Kay Williams, launched the Westshore Business Association (WBA) with a nucleus of 24 people.

"The first year, we increased the group to 75 members," Bedard says, "and it stayed between 110 and 120, went dormant awhile, then was reconstituted." Bedard, who was recently re-elected WBA secretary, believes the West Shore's economic potential has been underestimated, although she admits that it's going to take "real eff ort to get everyone, including California State Parks, to invent and run special events, particularly activities that touch on local history."

In 1992, Bedard partnered with Ruth Schnabel, long-time North Tahoe festival and event organizer, to operate Tahoe City's fi rst wedding chapel. Soon thereafter, she decided to leave the chamber and delve further into North Tahoe's then fl edgling wedding industry. Soon she was helping organize the nonprofi t North Lake Tahoe Wedding and Honeymoon Association and became its executive director. The association now has 120 members representing 32 diff erent specialties associated with weddings and honeymoons.

"In our tourist-based economy, the wedding business is recession proof," she explains. "There are 2.5 million weddings annually nationwide. Of those, 758,000 are second marriages. Weddings are a renewable resource, so to speak."

According to Bedard, North Tahoe's wedding industry has an annual $60 million impact on the local economy. "People come from all over the world to be married at Lake Tahoe," she says, "Russia, Israel, the Czech Republic. Foreigners think of Tahoe as a place to be married if they're thinking of visiting here anyway."

Noting that most of the wedding association's members are "Mom and Pop operations," Bedard says she is "truly a small business advocate. Statistics in the United States show that more new jobs and a better economy all come out of small business. They don't come out of the corporate world. My involvement in Tahoe's small businesses makes me feel that I'm giving something back to my community."

Early in her wedding career, Bedard became a licensed minister in the State of California. She has offi ciated over 2,500 weddings during the past 12 years. "You don't meet many wedding careerists who also offi ciate weddings," she says. "Most ministers are people of the cloth. I am not. But there's a mystique about what I do. People at cocktail parties always ask for more details. People view a minister as ethereal."

Mrs. Bedard marries or arranges weddings for scores of California, Nevada and Texas brides. The most popular places to be married, particularly in the summer, are along Tahoe's shoreline (Gar Woods and Sunnyside Resort restaurants, the North Tahoe Conference Center) and in Truckee at the west end of Donner Lake.

Bedard sees the wedding industry as a perfect industry for Tahoe. "Honeymoons occur in mid week, many times fi lling a shoulder period," she says. "And the married couple, their entourage and guests stay in the Tahoe area three or four days at least rather than one day. You get more bang for your buck with a wedding."

Bedard's own marriage is now in its 47th year. Her 3 grown children—a chef, an architectural draftsman and a bed and breakfast manager—regularly enjoy a portion of her time. Last summer, she arranged for her, Don and 15 of their friends to enjoy a 23-day cruise through the Caribbean to the Canary Islands, Spain and Italy.

Bev and Don, who is semi-retired, share a vastly windowed home offi ce that looks out onto decking and pathways he's built and trees, shrubs and fl owers she's planted. They have separate desks, phones and diff erent working lives. But in time off , they travel together in a small motor home up and down the Sierra. During the winter, they escape to a house they have in Reno.

No matter where she's going or what she's doing, Tahoe is never far from Bedard's thoughts—the place she has truly made her own.

—Kathie Hoxsie