Wedding boom leaves vendors scrambling
Couples play catch-up as bookings pushed into 2022 and 2023
NEW YORK » Couples in the U.S. are racing to the altar in a vaccination-era wedding boom that has venues and other vendors in high demand.
With restrictions on large gatherings loosening, wedding planners and others who make the magic happen said they’ve started pushing their bookings into late 2022 and early 2023.
“We’ve run out of trucks for some dates this year, and that hasn’t happened before,” said Ben Goldberg, co-founder and president of the New York Food Truck Association. “Our phones have been ringing off the hook with clients looking to have the weddings they had to put off during COVID(-19).”
Also contributing to the rush are couples who went ahead and got hitched during stricter pandemic times with few or no guests and are now on their second goarounds with larger groups. They’re competing for services with those who always had intended to marry this year.
“We’re seeing a lot of lastminute bookings with shorter planning windows,” said Anna Noriega, who owns the luxury Alorè Event Firm in Miami. “With vaccinations becoming more prevalent and on-site COVID testing available for events, we’ve seen an uprise in guest counts and a push for bookings.”
Namisha Balagopal, 27, of Emeryville is among the double brides. She and Suhaas Prasad, 33, met in 2014 and got engaged in May 2019. They planned a traditional South Asian Indian wedding last August in Utah, where Balagopal grew up, with 320 guests and events over five days. But they couldn’t make it happen under pandemic restrictions. They decided on a small sunset ceremony that month with fewer than 10 people in attendance on Muir Beach near San Francisco. It’s where they had their first date and where Prasad proposed.
Now their big celebration is on for Aug. 15 outdoors at their original venue in Park City, Utah, with about 230 guests and events over several days, including seven clothing changes for bride and groom. Many of their closest loved ones in India aren’t permitted to travel to the U.S.
“It’s just a really big part of our culture,” Balagopal said of the extravaganza.
“In the end, it was really important to our parents.”
The boom is on in bridal and bridesmaids dresses, too.
The budget-friendly David’s Bridal chain, with 282 stores in the U.S. and more in the U.K., Canada and Mexico, has 300,000 dresses in stock in part because of the wedding drought of 2020.
“Moving forward, it’s going to be an unprecedented wedding season this year,” said Maggie Lord, a vice president at David’s whose online wedding planning guide, Rustic Wedding Chic, was acquired by the company. David’s has been tracking broad wedding data through the pandemic.
“Couples are getting super-creative and having Thursday night ceremonies or Friday afternoon ceremonies just because of the amount of people getting married this year,” Lord said.
“We do know that 90% of brides this year are looking to have their weddings at outdoor venues,” where there are fewer restrictions.
Lord said the pandemic has helped normalize non-traditional aspects of weddings: an end to passed hors d’oeuvres and buffets, for instance, more livestreaming to accommodate travel restrictions, and more online planning and shopping.
Competition for vendors has some upping their prices. “They know they have customers who will pay it,” she said. “Wedding vendors are making up for a year of limited if no work at all.”
Anna Price Olson, associate editorial director for Brides magazine, said many vendors in the wedding industry are small businesses.
“They’re trying to meet the demand of new clients and clients who have postponed,” she said. “In order to do so, in many cases, they’re having to charge more. They’re having to hire additional resources, bring staff members back. Also the cost of goods is increasing. There are only so many linens, only so many rentals and only so many flowers that were planted this past season.”