A traditional Chinese wedding ceremony is held in Guiyang, Guizhou Province, Nov. 16, 2020. A Confucius School in Guiyang invited eight couples to hold a traditional Chinese wedding, which was based on the ceremony of Zhou Dynasty (1046BC -- 256BC). (Photo: China News Service/Qu Honglun)

The upcoming May Day holiday will not only present a peak travel season, but also a peak wedding season in China, as the pent-up demand among Chinese consumers has been boosted after the country effectively controlled the COVID-19 outbreak.

Many new couples plan to have their wedding ceremony during the May Day holiday, leading to a wedding market boom including wedding photography, dress rental, banquets and honey moon travel.

The search volume of wedding services during the May Day five-day holidays starting from May 1 to May 5 on Alipay rose four times from last year, according to Alipay's official Weibo account on Wednesday. 

The number of people searching for marriage registration appointments, premarital medical check-up, wedding photo service, flower reservations, and wedding car rentals increased 265 percent, 108 percent, 950 percent, 350 percent and 173 percent, respectively compared with last year, according to Aliyun.

A Beijing resident surnamed Lin told the Global Times on Sunday that she has booked the wedding photography six months ahead of the May Day holiday, as she failed to book a photographer during last year’s National Day holiday in October.

“My husband and I would like to take advantage of the holiday to make sure this ‘important’ event gets done, when our relatives and friends all have spare time to attend,” Lin said.

Packed orders

The number of weddings scheduled during the five-day holidays has grown significantly, more than the weddings the country witnessed during the National Day holiday in 2020, an owner of a Chongqing wedding logistics company surnamed Chen told the Global Times on Thursday. 

Chen added that his company almost went under, for there were not many weddings held last year after the coronavirus onslaught hit. Consequently, all the scheduled weddings which did not take place in 2020 have been put off to this year.   

It is tricky to arrange a wedding ceremony involving videographers, photographers, makeup artists, and event hosts as many of them are fully contracted, and the price of hiring them has shot up, Chen noted, adding that wedding decoration materials will be hard to find before the coming May Day holiday. 

Wedding photo studios have been fully booked for the five-day holiday, according to a source from a top-ranking wedding photo studio on the online sharing platform Dazhong Dianping. 

Jiang Zhixin, the founder of a bakery store in Yinchuan city of Northwest China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, told the Global Times that he is preparing food and cakes for three weddings that will be held during the May Day holiday. He estimated that his income could increase by 30 percent for the holiday.

“Orders have been coming in for the May Day holiday from six months ago. So far, 150 couples have booked to shoot wedding photos during the holiday, which is far more than the same period in 2019,” a manager at Elwon Visual, a photography agency, told the Global Times on Sunday, adding that the May Day holidays in 2020 were shadowed by the virus.

A staffer at Gladys Only, a company for wedding dress rental, said that orders for wedding dress rentals have increased fivefold compared with the same period in 2019, with the most expensive single order reaching 60,000 yuan ($9,235).

Apart from wedding products like gold accessories and home appliances, e-commerce platforms have prepared honeymoon travel package for new weds. For example, a 6-day travel package in Southwest China is available on Suning.com for only 588 yuan.

Pent-up demand released

“Wedding demand, which is part of surging demand, has been seriously pent-up since last year. It gradually erupted in the holidays this year. Since weddings and honeymoons are often linked together, the five-day May Day holidays are more appropriate than the Qingming Festival holidays in April,” a Shenzhen-based analyst surnames Wu told the Global Times on Saturday.

Wu added that the May Day holiday travel data reflects the consumption demand of the Chinese people, including cultural and entertainment consumption. 

“Traveling and wedding require much money and leisure. The weather and temperature are just right in May in China, with beautiful landscapes, which boosted the wedding season in China,” Huang Tao, a public relations analyst, told the Global Times on Sunday.

“Many people like me who want to get married fail to book a wedding venue in October,” according to Lin. 

A total of 8.131 million couples registered for marriage in China in 2020, per data from the Ministry of Civil Affairs. 

“A conservative estimate is that at least a quarter of newlyweds registered last year will tie the knot this year. Coupled with the number of new marriages registered in 2021, this has pushed up demand in the wedding market,” said Wu.

Successful virus control 

“On National Day, many friends and relatives’ companies ask them to avoid mass gathering. Many people have not been vaccinated, and people are worried about gathering together, especially dining together,” said Lin.

Wedding data reflects the fact that prevention measures are kept in place, so people are not worried about mass gatherings. This could explain the high demand for weddings, said Wu.

As of Friday, China had administered 216 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, according to the official website of the National Health Commission.