If you’re planning a wedding in 2022, you’ve likely read something about the so-called “wedding boom.”
The theory goes that all of the couples who wanted to get married in 2020 and 2021 but held off because of COVID-19 are now getting married in 2022. This means that demand is higher than ever and as such, couples can expect fewer options and higher prices.
What’s the evidence for this so-called boom? From what I can tell, it all traces back to one survey conducted by a marketing research firm called The Wedding Report. The Wedding Report survey is cited in a flurry of articles published on August 6, 2021, including this Fast Company story and this Axios article (which was republished by Yahoo! on the same day). That same survey was later picked up by NPR on September 12, 2021.
Unfortunately, the survey itself leaves quite a bit to be desired. I wish there was more explanation of how and when the data was collected. Many key metrics also aren’t included. For example: What’s the definition of a “consumer”? When was this information collected? How?
My misgivings about the survey aside, it’s still getting a lot of attention. And, as is so often the case with a half-baked wedding industry survey that gets widespread media coverage, the result is more stress. Couples keep asking me about this notorious boom. Are they screwed?
Short answer: No. Long answer: You and your partner can actually make any so-called “wedding boom” work for you.
First, use the wedding boom as an excuse to get real about money.
One of the most dire warnings in articles about the wedding boom is that everything is costing couples a lot more money. “Couples are spending an average of $22,500, up $3,000 from 2020,” says the Axios article, citing data from The Knot.
That’s not exactly news since weddings were costing people somewhere between $20,000 and $30,000 long before COVID. I don’t say this to make it sound normal — these numbers are obscene — but to show that wedding expenses have been bloated for a very long time and yes, they are probably getting worse but the way to deal with this isn’t to despair.
Instead, use this opportunity to have an honest conversation with your partner about how much money you actually want to spend on your wedding. When you do this, buck conventional wedding budgeting wisdom, which says, “Hey, couple. Here are 15 vendors. Hire all of them.”
That conventional wisdom makes sense if you have an average of $2,000 to spend on each vendor but many couples don’t. Or perhaps they do but would understandably prefer to put $30K toward literally any other goal in their lives together.
What’s my alternative? Start by figuring out who you actually want to hire vs. who you’re expected to hire.
To do this, look at that list of 15 vendors and break them into three buckets: top five, middle five, and bottom five. Spend 50 percent of your budget on the top five, 30 percent on the middle five, and 10 percent on the bottom five. The remaining 10 percent is for non-vendor services like decorations, gifts, and oh yeah your marriage license.
You can figure out your top, middle, and bottom five using this free prioritization worksheet. The same exercise is also in my book.
Important note: This exercise doesn’t guarantee you won’t spend $30K. Wedding planning is, as advertised, extremely expensive. That’s for all kinds of reasons, many of which COVID has made worse. Global delays in supply chains for florists, caterers, and other vendors, service industry labor shortages, and the honest-to-god truth of vendors like myself increasing our prices so we don’t flame out after COVID and quit the industry entirely are all very real.
And there’s not a damn thing you and your partner can do about any of it.
So instead of twisting yourself into knots over systems far outside of a single mortal’s control, approach the problem from a new angle. There’s no need to burn the midnight oil to book all of your vendors a year out — wedding boom or no wedding boom. Instead, aim to book one vendor a month.
That means researching, interviewing, and ultimately hiring the vendor in question. There are two exceptions to this rule.
Exception no. 1: If you are getting married in a shorter window of time and have a longer list of vendors (i.e. if you’re getting married in six weeks and want to hire 10 people, you’ll need to speed up the process).
Exception no. 2: Every once and awhile a couple falls in love with a particular vendor — photography comes to mind — and the couple sincerely cannot imagine hosting their wedding if said person isn’t there.
In both cases, you know what to do: Hire the person.
Boom or no boom, don’t forget to be nice.
My best advice for planning a wedding in 2021 will hold true in 2022: Be nice. Be nice not only because it’s nice to be nice but because it will serve you and your partner.
I recommend this so strongly because you’re hiring a bunch of service industry workers. These are folks who are statistically more likely to have suffered more during the pandemic.
Wedding vendors are exhausted, scared, and stressed out. Clients who are nice to us stand out after two years of clients who haven’t been nice because they were too exhausted, scared, and stressed out themselves to consider our safety and the safety of our families.
Any kind of wedding boom will only put more pressure on an already stressed out population of workers so make the boom work for you and be nice to your vendors.
You will undoubtedly get better service. In some cases, you might even get better rates. That’s because wedding vendors are service workers — we get joy out of serving others. Serve us just a little and you’ll be amazed at how nice we are in return.
Hitting a dead end? Ask for referrals.
One of the oldest marketing plays in the wedding business book is to convince a couple that if they don’t hire you, their wedding is ruined. That’s why the no. 1 piece of advice from so many wedding planners is to hire a wedding planner.
The wedding boom has given vendors even more ammunition to freak out their leads. Not only will your wedding be ruined but now you’re also an idiot if you didn’t book so-and-so 20 months out.
There’s not much we can do about this gross tactic so let’s not let it bog us down. If you keep getting “already booked” replies from vendors, ask them for referrals. Perhaps that seems counterintuitive. Why would someone want to refer a competitor?
Remember: This is the wedding industry we’re talking about. Here, very little makes sense. In my industry, I actually profit if I refer a competitor because it increases my chances that they’ll return the favor the next time they’re booked and I’m not.
Plus, many wedding vendors get great joy from referring friends. We have strong feels about vendors who don’t show up in a meaningful way when it comes to celebrating Black lives or honoring queer love. As such, we have no problem telling couples to hire people who will care for them like we would have cared for them if we had been free.
Ignore the wedding boom.
There’s an interesting but ignored point in The Wedding Report survey. It’s bullet point no. 8: “87 percent of couples say they are not having any issues finding what they need or want.”
Again, I’m dubious of the general credibility of this survey but that stat is worth noting. It tells us that nearly all of the people whom the wedding boom is supposed to be hurting say they’re actually doing just fine.
Notably, wedding vendors say the same thing. Bullet point no. 4 reads: “Some are seeing surges already while others are not. I think it depends on where you are in the country and the type of business you are in.” So if you, like so many of my vendor friends, are feeling seriously dispirited because “everybody is booking all of the people so why aren’t I?” it’s actually not as bad as you think.
Which brings us back to the original point of this article: Is the wedding boom real or is it just another lie used to sell us things we don’t actually want?
Does it matter?
The important thing is that your wedding is an event that you and your partner are planning together. If you two are on the same page about what you want, it doesn’t matter how many weddings happen per capita. Boom or no boom, your goal is to marry each other. That won’t change whatever survey comes out.