Couples still high on the euphoria of a new wedding engagement had better prepare themselves for a cold reality: Right now, finding the perfect life partner might be easier than planning the perfect wedding event.

Wedding planners and vendors across the U.S. report record numbers of inquiries and bookings through 2024 thanks to Covid-19 wedding postponements. According to projections from the wedding-planning website the Knot, an estimated 2.6 million weddings will take place in the U.S. in 2022, a record high. Around the...

Couples still high on the euphoria of a new wedding engagement had better prepare themselves for a cold reality: Right now, finding the perfect life partner might be easier than planning the perfect wedding event.

Wedding planners and vendors across the U.S. report record numbers of inquiries and bookings through 2024 thanks to Covid-19 wedding postponements. According to projections from the wedding-planning website the Knot, an estimated 2.6 million weddings will take place in the U.S. in 2022, a record high. Around the same number of weddings have been set in 2021, leading to vendors and venues finding themselves overbooked and, in some cases, increasing prices.

Among couples with 2022 wedding dates, 17% had replanned their weddings, according to data from Zola, an online wedding-gift registry.

“After the last almost two years of this isolation and worry and panic, we all want to celebrate more than ever,” says Lauren Kay, the Knot’s executive editor.

As engagement season arrives, already-fierce competition for wedding venues and services such as photography, catering and beauty services is about to get fiercer. Before the pandemic, approximately 40% of U.S. engagements occurred between Thanksgiving and Valentine’s Day, according to the online wedding marketplace WeddingWire.

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The wedding industry has been hampered by global supply-chain strains and labor shortages that have limited supply and driven prices up on some goods and services. Some desperate brides and grooms are resorting to begging, bribery or simply lowering their expectations.

Gene and Veronica Carbona, who own a wedding venue in Winthrop, Maine, say they usually turned away two or three couples a year because their dates were already booked. Now, they say they are turning away 20 to 25 couples a week.

Mr. Carbona says a bride-to-be came to visit the venue early this year looking for a fall 2021 date. “I said, listen, I’m so sorry, there’s nothing I can do and she said, ‘Well, maybe there is something you can do,’ ” he remembers. “She said, ‘Please contact any of those mid-September girls who booked more than a year ago, and my father will give them $25,000 for that day.’ ” Mr. Carbona says he refused.

In a typical year, Hillary Fay, a makeup artist in Huntington, Vt., works 40 to 45 weddings. By the end of 2021, she will have worked 81, many postponed from 2020.

Ms. Fay says she increased her rates by about 20%. She worried that higher prices would turn some couples away, but they didn’t, she says. One bride offered to pay an extra $500 for Ms. Fay and a pair of hairstylists to bump another client for her date.

Some betrothed couples are booking venues sight unseen.

When Mara Zrzavy and Alex Roberts started the search for reception venues in 2021 for their fall 2022 wedding, only two venues near their church were available.

Photo: Jenn Ayres/Ayres Photography

Bride-to-be Jill Dwiggins, 33, researched venues online, looking at photographers’ galleries from past weddings. She says she also spoke with venue staff and couples who got married at the venues that interested her. She had specific criteria in mind: a venue with Covid-19 precautions and an outdoor space. Anxious that the one she liked might book up, Ms. Dwiggins says she put a deposit down without seeing it in person.

“Nerve-racking but worth it,” says Ms. Dwiggins, who was living in New England while planning her wedding in Apex, N.C., where she now lives and works in publishing.

Mara Zrzavy, 28, a lawyer in Olean, N.Y., says she would have done the same if her mother hadn’t insisted on touring the venue. After she and her fiancé were engaged in October 2020, she started requesting information packets from vendors but grew overwhelmed and took a pause.

By the time she started the search for reception venues in early summer 2021 for her fall 2022 wedding, only two venues in the same area as their church were available. By the time she toured them both, that number was down to one.

“You’re free that day? I don’t need to talk to you or anything, just where do I Venmo you?” Ms. Zrzavy recalls telling that venue.

Couples planning weddings in the next couple of years should book early, be flexible and expect higher prices, industry experts and workers say. The projected average cost for weddings in 2022 and 2023 ranges from $24,300 to $24,900, according to the Wedding Report, up from $22,500 in 2021.

Carlos Chaverst Jr. and Memri Williams said they increased their wedding budget to accommodate rising costs.

Photo: Ruka Armstrong Photography

Carlos Chaverst Jr., 28, and Memri Williams, 27, who are planning a wedding for May in Birmingham, Ala., increased their budget to accommodate rising costs. Their overall budget is about $17,000, up from their initial proposal of $10,000. They say the planning process has been stressful, but the couple has tried not to let it cloud the excitement about their big day.

“The urgency for me is definitely high. I’m ready.” Ms. Williams says. “We have even talked a few times like maybe we just go and elope,” she jokes.

Daniel Van Vliet, 29, proposed to his boyfriend, Kyle Childress, in October, but anticipated how overwhelmed the industry would be with postponements and new weddings. Right away, the couple agreed on a long engagement.

“We decided to avoid having to make hasty decisions and maybe compromise,” says Mr. Van Vliet, who works in recruiting at a technology company in Jersey City, N.J. “Let’s go with 2023.”

Write to Alex Janin at Alex.Janin@wsj.com