Newly engaged here!!

Congratulations on your engagement!! If I were you, I wouldn't worry too much about Covid right now because you are still almost 2 years out. You can start researching vendors and if you find some that you absolutely love, lock them in. Otherwise you still have a little while, you definitely can wait a bit before making deposits.

Most vendors are booked through 2022 and are starting to book 2023. If you don't have any deposits or contracts yet, July 23 may not be your wedding date. In any case, I know you probably don't want to hear this but it's too early to guess the situation almost a year from now. I'm May 2022 and moving ahead with our plans unless state guidelines change.

I honestly think midsummer dates are fine because they are far from flu season. I was married the day before you this year and I originally had a winter date that I had to change because it was in the middle of flu season and we were restricted to 50 guests at the time.

I'm getting married on March 19, 2022 and have made the decision to plan my dream wedding. COVID is constantly in flux and it's hard to know what the situation will be closer to your date. My rule of thumb was that I'd rather plan the wedding of my dreams and have to change plans at the last minute rather than settle and be left saying "man I should have...".

While we have placed some deposits, most of the money isn't due until 30 or 60 days out, which we should have a much better idea by then with our vendors. I would do what you're comfortable with - but with the way things are booking if you don't get started soon you won't have anyone left to pick from next July.

Congratulations on your engagement!! Just echoing what others have said, 2022 seems to be a very popular year for weddings! Between COVID couples pushing their dates back and newly engaged couples popping up in the mix too, there seems to be a healthy amount of competition for things like venues and vendors. Our date is mid-Sept 2022, and I'm already running into vendors that you normally don't book over a year out (and can take on multiple clients a weekend; for example, florists), already being booked solid for our weekend. I think competition for venues/vendors will be your bigger issue vs what COVID may or may not be doing at that time. Just something to consider! Happy wedding planning!

Congratulations! I personally am not worried about Covid at this point, there's nothing we can do if it's still an issue so I'd rather plan like it won't be. I also agree with others that you should lock down vendors now if you do plan on keeping July 2022. We got engaged last October and immediately started looking because we were hoping to get married this October. We had to switch to October 2022 because there were no venues available and even then, two years out, venues and other vendors were beginning to book fast.

I don't think COVID is going to be your biggest concern, honestly. I think planning a wedding for NEXT July you're going to discover you have a hard time finding a venue.

Congratulations!!

I had the same concern as you. Luckily my fiance and I were able to book our wedding venue for October 20, 2022. Even though we don't know what the future holds we thought we would book it and if it so happens we have another lockdown we would work through it. I did, however, before signing the contract, I made sure we knew what our options would be if our wedding did have to get canceled. The venue said they would allow us a reschedule date with no expiration date or deadline. So before signing your contract make sure you double-check with their policies and make sure you can either get your money back or change your wedding date.

Congratulations!

I also agree with the others that you need to get cracking if you haven't started booking any vendors in - it really is going to be a busy year.

We booked our September 2021 wedding back in May of 2020, and have recently had to postpone it. I remember thinking as we booked it, that surely, 18 months out, things would have started to improve and recover? But here we are, in a longer, harder lockdown where I live than we were when we made our original bookings, and rebooked for February 2022.

Our wedding should have been in 18 days' time. We booked a long time in advance in the desperate hopes that things would be better now, but there's just no accounting for what could happen in a year. I'd book now, but as Caren says above, make sure you get it in writing that you can change your date if you need to.

My date is July 2, 2022 and I agree with everyone--get going! We started planning in the beginning of May and a lot of venues were already booking up. I am a bit concerned about covid, but when I was looking for vendors, I took a close look at what people said about flexibility over the past 18 months and only booked with vendors with a lot of "They were great to work with during the covid craziness!" comments in the reviews. So hopefully even if something does happen, we chose people who can work with changes if necessary.