average wedding cost

What Does Inflation Mean for the Wedding Industry?

The Canadian wedding industry was particularly sensitive to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The lockdowns of 2020 brought the industry to a grinding halt. Venues were closed, and vendors saw their bookings vanish overnight. Even as lockdown restrictions began to ease in 2021, the wedding industry was slow to recover. Couples and public health officials alike were reluctant to embrace large public gatherings. As such, the sector would languish for another year.

However, 2022 has been viewed as a hard reset for Canadian wedding professionals. But while the year has brought a sense of optimism, there are still challenges on the horizon. Since so many couples had delayed their ceremonies, the industry now faces a supply shortage. While many vendors are happy to have full calendars again, the supply shortage can make planning a wedding difficult. The internal dynamics of the wedding industry are challenging enough, but now there is evidence that the industry is preparing to deal with a broader economic trend: inflation. 

Inflation in Canada 

Economists define inflation as a general increase in the price of goods and services. While the cause is the subject of intense debate, the United States and Canada are currently experiencing the highest inflation in decades. Statistics Canada puts the country’s official inflation rate at a whopping 6.8%. This marks the highest inflation rate in over 30 years. The rise in prices can be seen everywhere, and weddings are no exception. 

What Inflation Means for the Wedding Industry

Weddings are notoriously expensive. Before the pandemic and the inflation that followed, a couple could expect to spend around $30,000 on their big day. The current economic environment could very well see a dramatic increase in a wedding’s sticker price.

Typically, the most considerable expense a couple encounters when planning a wedding is the venue space. Even if inflation were not a factor, the surge in demand for weddings is making venues difficult to secure. High demand means that venue owners can charge more to rent out their spaces.

Additionally, though, venue spaces are currently experiencing higher operating costs. Increases in the prices of utilities combined with an ongoing labor shortage are contributing to higher venue prices across the country.

Catering is also particularly sensitive to the current inflationary environment. The combination of high fuel costs, the labor shortage, and an ongoing supply chain crisis has culminated in record food prices.

Wedding caterers are already stretched thin to fulfill their obligations, but an increase in the cost of food and transportation has caused them to raise their prices. While 2022 is still on track to be a record year for weddings, this ongoing rise means that couples must be creative with their wedding budgets. 

How Couples Are Responding

The pandemic and the business environment that it created have changed the wedding industry forever. Couples have had the opportunity to reframe their expectations about what a wedding should be. To meet the challenges in the marketplace, couples are embracing micro weddings and even virtual weddings. They’re also embracing a do-it-yourself mentality. Rather than outsourcing planning, catering, or decorating, nearlyweds are finding value in getting their friends and family involved. Not only does this save money, but it creates a more genuine and community-oriented experience for all.

While times are certainly challenging, the future is optimistic. It appears that many couples are getting back to the basics of what weddings are truly for. While the industry is still in the early phases of this transition, what is certain is that vendors will adapt to ensure that great wedding ceremonies are accessible to all who want them. 

The Surprisingly High Wedding Cost in Canada

Wedding Cost

Recent research shows that a person in Canada who is planning to get married figures to spend about $15,000 on the affair. But even with that amount spent, most respondents to a recent survey say they don’t expect to be able to pay the entire bill for their big day alone.

Shocking Wedding Cost Stats

Some surprising statistics come from the recent poll, including the facts that:

  • Some 60 percent of respondents expect to cover some of the costs of their anticipated wedding by drawing on savings or other investments
  • About 40 percent see their dream wedding as unattainable for them
  • Most respondents anticipate a need to rely on friends and family for additional costs that they will not be able to cover

The survey produced findings that cause concern for some financial planning experts. The CEO of the company conducting the survey noted that, typically, retirement is one category of future needs where “people will typically underestimate what they’re going to need to spend and then get surprised.” She noted that the recent study reveals a “very similar pattern of behavior” with respect to planning for the costs of a wedding.

The company CEO recommends that those anticipating a wedding should put together a realistic, comprehensive budget for the event. She advises that people put away some money every month for future wedding plans, realizing that the total bill may come in at a figure that can be shocking after adding up all the various line items in the budget.

Canadian Bred Rocker to Wed in California

Sebastian Bach, singer for rock band Skid Row, is getting married, again, and you may be on the guest list. The rocker has Canadian roots, as he was raised in Peterborough, Ontario, but he plans to tie the knot this time in San Jose, California.

The venue where Bach and bride-to-be Suzanne Le, a beauty from Hawaii, intend to get hitched has offered “limited edition” tickets to the couple’s “Rock and Roll Extravaganza” wedding, planned for Aug. 22. For $300 each, fans and celebrants of the nuptials can join the happy couple on their wedding day at the Rockbar Theater. Dress code is “rockstar chic.”

Wedding Tears

A surprise twist to a wedding in Canada caused the bride to break out in tears of joy at the effort her new husband had put into learning a song to sing for her. Of Indian descent, she was thrilled and overjoyed when she realized that her Canadian husband was belting out a Bollywood love song for her in front of all the guests with the video cameras rolling.

The documentation of that moment took the Internet by storm, sweeping social media venues with repeated views. Many millions of people, strangers to the couple and their wedding in Canada, have clicked and viewed, liked and shared and helped to spread the nuptial serenade far and wide across the World Wide Web.

Start of Something Big?

The groom nailed the performance so entirely that he now fields requests to sing at other weddings. His wife hopes that one day, when they visit her family in India, he may perform for relatives there.

More important than any alternate career as a wedding singer, though, is the joy that the couple has spread by sharing their moment of love. They use their moment of unexpected celebrity to spread a message of hope, asking citizens on the web to “Show Some Love” with videos or selfies showing people expressing affection, respect, kindness and love.

They hope that the attention they have received can make a small positive impact on the world with their challenge to everyone to “make a headline news story of love and a positive message” and share it with the billions of human beings who are connected to the digital commons of the information age. Their story provides a simple template of the type of experience they have in mind: they urge everyone to document moments where someone does something special for someone else, simply for the pure joy of the moment.