MACON, Ga. — Summer is fast approaching and you can hear wedding bells. According to some brides and wedding venues, this season should be a busy one.
We took a walk down the wedding planning aisle to take a look at this year's season.
"I am getting married on June 11, so it is less than 52 days away,” said Morgan Wright.
Wright got engaged this past New Year's Eve.
"My future mother-in-law was really, really excited and was like, 'Hey, some of my friends are getting married and they're having issues finding venues, caterers, florists, so go ahead and get on it,‘“ she said.
Finding the venue (The Blacksmith Shop) for her wedding was easy, but she ran into other trouble.
"Once I had the venue, I couldn't find a photographer, I couldn't find all this other stuff,” she said.
But Morgan considers herself lucky because her caterer helped her find the rest of her vendors, but one of her friends wasn’t quite as lucky.
"She actually got married last year, but her wedding was originally scheduled for April 2020. It, of course, got canceled because of COVID,” said Wright.
Most of the vendors canceled and her friend spent a lot of money finding others. Morgan says the wedding turned out great, but she took it as a learning lesson.
"I knew I didn't want that and I also knew that I had to be very realistic and say, 'Hey, I need to scale everything down and have a smaller wedding,’” said Wright.
Aubrey Newby, the sales manager at the Blacksmith Shop, says small weddings are the trend.
"You know the 250 person weddings we used to do... we're seeing a lot of the trend towards smaller events that can be more intimate,” he said.
Newby says that before COVID, the venue had booked 60-70 events per year. Almost half got canceled, some even the week of, though Newby says business is coming back.
"Our schedule this year has obviously increased from last year, so we're continuing to see an increase in the number of bookings,” he said.
According to a study by the wedding planning website The Knot, around 2.6 million weddings are scheduled for 2022. They say that's the most in recent history.
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