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I WAS SUPPOSED TO GET MARRIED IN SEPTEMBER 2020.

Well, technically, as my husband would be quick to correct me, I did get legally married in September 2020 in the courtyard of our New York City apartment building in front of our parents, a handful of friends who lived nearby and a naked guy standing in the window of the building next door, who, I am told, cheered when we recessed. The 13 people in attendance wore masks I’d ordered with our wedding date printed on them, sat in distanced lawn chairs and sipped gazpacho I’d blended and individually bottled that morning in a frenzy of health-safety panic.

This was not the wedding of 220 people that we had originally planned. A few months into the pandemic, we made the call to delay our big celebration until 2021. We were hardly alone. In a typical year, Americans throw 2 million weddings, according to wedding website the Knot. Last year, about 1 million couples in the U.S. postponed their nuptials, canceled them altogether or, like us, had a legal ceremony and delayed the reception. The wedding industry as a whole saw a 34% decline in revenue, according to an IBIS World report—the drop likely would have been bigger, but many couples who rescheduled their weddings had to pay to keep their venues and vendors for an extra year.

Now, as vaccines become readily available in the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention loosens restrictions on large gatherings and Americans become increasingly bored with their empty social calendars, a glut of weddings is coming. The long-dormant wedding-party text chains have started pinging again. The wedding-planning influencers I follow on Instagram have started posting videos of guests in tuxes and gowns getting antigen tests or showing their vaccine cards. “We expect a 20% to 25% increase in weddings this year and into 2022, and we think about 47% of those 2021 weddings will be happening between July and October,” says