Next Year Will See Most Weddings in Nearly 40 Years

The hot wedding trend for 2022? Actually getting married. Restrictions on gatherings during the pandemic lockdowns meant planned big weddings had to be postponed. News of other people’s weddings sparking outbreaks gave brides and grooms pause. Typically, there are more than 2 million weddings a year in the US, but only 1.2 million were celebrated in 2020, Axios reports. Sure, some people, like Sean Penn, got married on Zoom. Some people planned ‘micro-weddings.’ And plenty more are going to Vegas to elope, WREG reports. But traditional weddings are expected to boom next year, with market research firm the Wedding Report forecasting 2.5 million of them. Axios notes that would be the most since 1984.

The CEO of The Knot, a popular wedding planning website, agrees that a boom is coming. Couples are “ready to go all out again,” Timothy Chi tells CNBC. People are spending even more than they did before the pandemic. Because of the 2022 wedding boom, resources are thin. Venues are hard to find. “Monday is the new Saturday in Palm Beach,” Caroline Scarpinato, who books weddings for a resort in Palm Beach, Florida, tells the Wall Street Journal. Couples rescheduling postponed weddings or newly engaged are scrambling to find planners, hair stylists, officiants, and caterers, too. (More wedding stories.)