Is your wedding budget ready for the reception resurgence?

Wedding celebrations largely took a hiatus after the COVID-19 pandemic was declared in 2020. Among couples who had a set wedding date between March and December 2020, 47% postponed their wedding receptions, according to The Knot’s 2020 Real Weddings COVID Study. The trend continued this year.

In March, New York City couple Lindsay Holmes and Sean Brech pushed their wedding date from August 2021 to May 2022. “So many things were unclear at the time,” Brech says. “We wanted to push it out to 2022 to have the best possible wedding like how we originally envisioned it.”

Now, as the percentage of vaccinated Americans grows and restrictions ease, celebrations are roaring back . If you’re moving forward with or modifying wedding plans, here’s how to prepare your budget.

CONNECT WITH VENUES AND VENDORS AS SOON AS POSSIBLE

The high volume of couples who postponed weddings has created a “pent-up demand” for venues and vendors, says Lauren Kay, executive editor at The Knot. That’s restricting availability, and in some cases, leading businesses to raise prices.

If you haven’t secured the locations and services you need, start now. The longer you wait, the less flexibility you may have choosing your preferred date or vendors.

Amanda Berg , senior growth marketing manager for the wedding planning and registry website Zola, and fiance Jesse Krieger stress the importance of contacting vendors early. The couple — who plan to wed in Bedminster, New Jersey, next spring — learned how competitive the search was when they began looking into photographers. “Some of them were booked already for May 2022, and we were doing this planning in October, November of 2020,” Krieger says. “Fortunately, we got everyone we wanted, partly because we got such a head start.”

Couples who’ve already signed...