Wedding business is booming once again - but the way couples plan their nuptials might be changing forever.

LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM, June 20, 2023/EINPresswire.com/ -- Few industries bore the brunt of lockdowns as fiercely as the wedding market. Now, business is booming once again - but the way couples plan their nuptials might be changing forever.

Back-to-back lockdown summers were tough on the UK wedding industry. Even when weddings were permitted, the rules and guidelines that needed to be followed were, at times, dizzying. Now, as the pandemic retreats into memory, the wedding industry is in full swing once again. But with new data revealed by Poptop, there’s a sense that the way weddings are planned has potentially changed forever.

Last-minute weddings on the rise
Poptop - one of the UK’s leading wedding and party planning platforms - recently released data to highlight changing wedding trends in the wake of COVID and cost of living increases. Their numbers showed that couples are leaving it later than ever to organise catering, entertainment and drinks for their big day. Poptop reported wedding bookings with 3 month’s or less lead time are up 44% on pre-pandemic numbers. Once you take into account that wedding planning has traditionally kept to a lead time of 12 months or more, this data represents a fairly seismic shift in wedding planning behaviour. So what's lying behind these dramatic changes?

A change in how we plan major life events
There’s no denying that the experience of the last few years has changed the way we live and plan our lives. The wedding market is not immune to these changes. Most UK wedding suppliers have spent the last two years honouring bookings originally made for the summers of 2020 and early 2021.

These postponements, combined with couples’ newfound reluctance to rely on the infallibility of plans too far into the future, has meant that there are significant short-term gaps in event supplier’s diaries.

It means high end suppliers that would typically be booked out years in advance have availability for relatively last-minute bookings, and clients are taking advantage by planning their weddings at shorter notice. But it's not just booking times that are changing - the size and scale of weddings is evolving, too.

The shifting landscape for suppliers
Rising living costs are also having a significant impact on the styles of weddings planned. Wedding website Hitched recently revealed that the cost of UK weddings is up 6% vs 2021, and those figures are only set to rise again this year. Wedding planning is more expensive than ever, meaning many couples are turning to smaller, more intimate wedding plans in a bid to see their budget stretch further.

More and more couples are doing this by planning weddings amidst the comfort of home, or in private gardens and summer houses - weddings in these settings simply don’t need to be booked years in advance. Couples can cut the lead time on their big day considerably, and save a lot of money in the process. Of course, not every couple is going to be content with a more modest wedding - we still expect to see large-scale weddings with traditionally long lead times. But the fact that smaller weddings are even being considered represents a noticeable shift in the trends of wedding planning.

New tech changing the industry
How and where wedding suppliers are booked is changing, too, potentially turbo-charging the shortening lead time on wedding bookings as a result. Platforms like Poptop and its ‘Instant Quote’ technology can drastically cut the time it takes to find and book food, drinks, entertainment and party equipment, making it easier than ever to plan high-end last-minute weddings.

Whilst the wedding industry may have changed post-COVID, the desire to celebrate weddings is as strong as ever. The shift in wedding planning patterns may afford events suppliers less advanced notice than it did previously, but their diaries continue to fill up with happy couples looking to plan the biggest night of their lives.

"There’s no denying that the chaos that lockdowns brought on the wedding sector - but whilst we expected to see cancellation after cancellation, what we actually got was a wave of postponements that pushed plans into 2021 and 2022. In the aftermath of all this, event planning seems to be changing significantly - even huge life events like weddings are being organised more spontaneously than before. This represents a pretty momentous change to the wedding market, but these changes were arguably overdue. No other events sector retains such a long lead time, technology like Poptop’s has changed that, so it’s healthy to see wedding planning following the rest of the party planning industry in planning later than it used to. " - Eugene Shestopal - CEO, Poptop

Ievgenii Shestopal
PoptopUK Limited
+44 20 8064 0593
email us here
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