"Wedding fever" in spring

The couple at the wedding scene. Photo courtesy of interviewee

    As soon as the Spring Festival passed, the post-90s girl Zhuang Yafang began to get busy.

    She has been a wedding planner for 10 years. In recent days, her company's warm wedding consulting clients have not stopped, "there are guests who have postponed their weddings who want to hold weddings as soon as possible, and new customers have also begun to prepare for weddings."

    Wedding, for the couple, is undoubtedly an important and romantic ceremony. However, due to the epidemic and other factors, many weddings have been pressed the "hold button". Now, with the adjustment of epidemic prevention and control policies, a wedding boom is approaching.

    The wedding that was pressed the "snooze button"

    Prior to this, Zhuang Yafang's work rhythm stopped for a long time.

    "Especially in the period before the epidemic prevention and control in Beijing in 2022, all our weddings in Beijing were suspended and the venues were closed." Zhuang Yafang told reporters that weddings under the epidemic will always encounter various unexpected situations, such as fewer guests coming to the wedding, and the host and other staff may not be able to attend, "which requires a variety of preparations."

    "What if the wedding has to be rescheduled because of the pandemic?" This is a question that Hangzhou Maiqu wedding planner Li Minfei has often been asked by couples preparing for marriage in the past few years. In her opinion, people preparing for marriage during the epidemic will be more hesitant, "they are full of worries, always worried about whether the wedding will be postponed".

    Not wanting to hold a "mask wedding", Huang Yan, a post-95 girl living in Beijing, postponed the wedding originally held last year to this year. She originally planned to get her license on February 22, 2022, get her wedding on September 24, and go to Xinjiang for her honeymoon in October.

    However, half a month before receiving the certificate, she was isolated at home, and "she was ready to reschedule the license at that time." Fortunately, the week before receiving the license, her community was unblocked, and she and her partner hurried back to Tianjin to apply for a marriage license. However, the relatives and friends of the two are mainly concentrated in Beijing and Tianjin, and after the wedding invitation is issued, relatives and friends will be informed every day that they cannot attend, and only 3 tables of the original 10 wedding banquets remained, and finally had to postpone the wedding from September to October 2022, and then to March 26 this year.

    "Some newlyweds have babies who have been born, and the wedding has not yet been held because of continuous postponement, and some newlyweds directly say that they don't want to do it anymore and decide to travel to get married." Zhuang Yafang has encountered many weddings with twists and turns. Last November, a week before a wedding on the beach in Shenzhen, "almost every 24 hours there was a 5% reduction in guests, and when the wedding was five hours away, the host was unable to attend due to the lockdown of the community...

    These twists and turns of the epidemic wedding, in Zhuang Yafang's view, is also a special memory, "although the twists and turns, the final presentation of most weddings is still very warm."

    "The most crowded wedding season"?

    Today, Zhuang Yafang feels that the wedding industry is warming up, "We have learned that many star hotels and some very distinctive venues are basically full, and some venues are even fully booked for the Qingming Festival."

    Wedding photographer Zhang Lei feels the same way. In 2022, he will shoot no more than 10 weddings, and in desperation, he can only turn into his side job - voice engineer. Since New Year's Day this year, his studio has received an average of 10 orders a day, and the schedule has been scheduled for October 2024.

    "I've been in the business for 7 years, and I haven't seen so many orders." Zhang Lei said that this year can be called the "most crowded wedding season" in recent years, usually a wedding video about 600 yuan, now it has risen to 900 yuan. According to his observations, many couples who have cancelled or postponed their weddings due to the impact of the epidemic in previous years want to hold weddings this year, and about 70% of the weddings filmed by his studio since 2023 have been postponed.

    Baidu search index shows that since 2023, the search volume of wedding hotels has increased by 285% year-on-year, and the search volume of wedding photography has increased by 126% year-on-year. A wedding planner in Tianjin has been too busy to eat recently, "The lunch that the leader ordered for me was cold and hot, hot and cold, and I didn't eat it when it was dinner time."

    However, Li Minfei, who works and lives in Hangzhou, has not felt much change, "probably because Hangzhou was not greatly affected by the epidemic before." She told reporters that every spring, especially after the Lunar New Year, there will be more wedding-related consultations, "because weddings are generally concentrated in September, October and November, and couples tend to start preparing more than half a year in advance."

    Young people are more self-experiential than formal performance

    Li Minfei has been engaged in wedding planning for 10 years. In her opinion, in the past few years, there were many couples who pursued worry-free and affordable "packages", and now more couples pursue personalized weddings, "they generally want to hold a wedding that truly belongs to them, to be very relaxed and happy, and to care more about their inner needs and emotional expression." In her view, for young people, holding a wedding is not just "going through a process", but more like "hosting an unforgettable party with the heart".

    The post-95 girl Gao Ge did not want to hold a wedding at first, she felt that "returning to the ordinary of life is the ultimate romance, and the wedding is just for outsiders to see". In the eyes of her and her husband's elders, a grand wedding is the importance that the whole family attaches to her.

    After several conversations, Gao Ge and her husband chose to respect the wishes of both parents, but they had their own ideas and requirements: avoid excessive sensationalism, and the process was simple and straightforward. They canceled the cave room link, did not have an engagement car, and edited a VCR to play at the wedding scene, the content of their daily life since love.

    "I hope that the people who come to my wedding can witness our love in a simple and warm atmosphere, and I don't care how much it costs or how many tables are set." Gao Ge said that she cares more about whether the guests at the scene are well taken care of, which is also something she repeatedly communicates with her husband.

    And Huang Yan has never hesitated to hold a wedding, she has had a lawn wedding dream since she was a child. "There were blue skies, white clouds, green grass, balloons, and the most important family and friends attending my wedding, and I appeared in front of them in a white carriage." At the mention of the upcoming wedding, she smiled and her eyes were very bright.

    "I have attended many weddings in hotels, everyone sits at the table and eats and watches, noisy, without the solemnity and ritual I imagined weddings should have, I don't want my wedding to become a running water table." Huang Yan is determined to have a unique wedding of her own, and she feels that a lawn wedding will make relatives and friends pay 100% attention to the couple, and such a wedding is more meaningful.

    Huang Yan and her husband have been preparing for the wedding since 2021, booked a satisfactory lawn venue a year in advance, and have communicated with the planner dozens of times about various design details of the wedding. They also put a lot of thought into the process and content of the wedding - they bought a variety of candies in advance for evaluation, asked relatives and friends about their taste preferences, and finally selected a few cookies and gummies as candy; purchased 120 Polaroid photo papers for relatives and friends to take photos when they entered; The best man will also perform live magic, street dance and singing... Huang Yan's husband, Li Carey, said, "I hope everyone can feel our hearts when they attend our wedding."

    In Zhuang Yafang's view, relatively speaking, the post-90s and post-00s are more concerned about their own experience, not for a formal process or performance, but more about themselves and their hearts, "people in the past were more about decency, and now the focus of attention has changed from 'guests' to 'themselves'."

    Zhuang Yafang also observed that in recent years, the scale of weddings has changed, there are more and more small weddings, and at the same time, couples are more rational in their spending on weddings, "there are also customers who often hold weddings of hundreds of thousands, or even millions, but there are also many couples who will consider the reasonableness of spending."

    However, price is never the most important measure of a wedding, the most important thing is the temperature and memory of the day.

Source: China Youth Daily