Trends in the Wedding Industry
March 26, 2025
Elizabeth has seen numerous wedding trends over the last decade. She recalls helping couples plan their “themed” weddings when she first started in the industry back in 2014. She’s seen everything from baseball themed weddings to barn weddings and more!
Elizabeth describes event planning as an art and a science. Although the fundamentals of event planning primarily remain constant, the creativity and artistry vary for each event. Elizabeth is very excited about the 2025 & 2026 wedding industry trends and shared a few of her favorites with us.
The industry is seeing less formality in weddings and more personal free flowing elements that showcase the couples love for each other. Elizabeth is thrilled to see these trending changes in the industry are truly client focused. Couples are forgoing assigned seating opting for a cocktail style reception wedding throughout the entire celebration. With this structure, couples are offering food stations for dinner, fun signature cocktails, late night food trucks, just to name a few of the popular catering requests. Logistically, this allows catering to serve food easier and planners to create a floorplan and timeline that is more flexible. In doing so, couples can fully relax and enjoy their day, instead of focusing on the next “formality” in the timeline.
Content Creators are making a debut on vendor lists. In the era of instant social media posting and collaboration, content creators are highly sought after. Couples can hire content creators to curate reels, stories, posts and more for various social media platforms. Thus, allowing couples and their guests to remain present and fully enjoy their wedding. Typically, couples receive their professional wedding photography and videography media 4-8 weeks after their wedding, whereas a content creator typically has a turnaround time in less than 24 hours.
Subdued wedding colors are out and bold, bright colors and patterns are in! The industry embracing these vivid colors with flowers, invitations, linens, dinnerware, cakes and even guest attire! Photography artistry has also evolved to match this trend. The last few years, the wedding photography trend was bright and airy. Now, photography is embracing contrast even more.
There are many more exciting trends the wedding industry is seeing, but these are a few of Elizabeth’s personal favorites that she anticipates could be around for a while. With every wedding season providing something new and exciting, she has enjoyed seeing the trends evolve over the last decade. Most importantly, she enjoys collaborating with her industry partners and bringing couples wedding visions to life with their unique personal story. She expresses that the best part of the wedding planning process, is seeing the couple and their guests with the biggest smile on their faces at the end of the reception!
Elizabeth Allen is from Northern Virginia and has been planning weddings & special events since 2014, when she began her career in the Hospitality Industry. She graduated with her Bachelor’s Degree in Hospitality Management from George Mason University. She continued her academic journey at Virginia Tech and completed her Master of Science in Business Administration with a concentration in Hospitality and Tourism Management in 2020. Throughout her tenured career, she has had the opportunity to plan thousands of events throughout the Washington DC metro area. Although she has experience in planning various types of events, she specializes in weddings. In addition to her full-time career as an Event Planner, she teaches Event Management in the Virginia Tech MSBA HTM program. Elizabeth enjoys bringing her practical experiences into the classroom, while sharing everyday examples of what a career in event planning encompasses. When she is not planning weddings or teaching event planning classes, you can find her exploring the great outdoors! Elizabeth is an avid hiker and on her days off, she's always ready to hit the trails.