The revival of the Border and North East wedding sector begins this weekend - and one marriage celebrant is running a networking event to prepare.
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De Bortoli Wines events and function co-ordinator Jennifer Willis will host 'The Bridal Bounce-Back' on Wednesday night with vendors.
"It's just an evening to network and to build those relationships again; we haven't really been able to see a lot of our vendors over the two years," she said.
"It will enable us to chat through those bounce back strategies while we strive for a really strong 2022 and 2023.
"Of course, we are still battling density requirements, so we couldn't have it be anywhere near as big as we wanted to.
"But it really came about when that roadmap was released, and we could go, 'Okay it's going to be possible'."
Currently, weddings in regional Victoria can occur with 30 vaccinated people indoors or up to 100 people outdoors, subject to density limits.
But from 6pm Friday, up to 500 vaccinated people can attend a wedding, if there's no more than one person per four square metres indoors and no more than one person per two square metres outdoors.
If vaccination status is unknown, up to 30 people can attend.
Ms Willis said the roadmap's release gave "light at the end of the tunnel".
"That's when we started to see a lot of confidence grow; we started to get a lot more enquiries come through for weddings and business events like conferences," she said.
"We are seeing a lot more of that; traditionally, weddings were a Saturday night, but we are seeing a lot more lunchtime and midweek weddings, as well as elopements and micro weddings.
"Traditionally wedding season has kind of been March through to early May, and then it picks back up from September ... but we're just seeing the entire year being our wedding season.
"Everyone's just taking whatever time they can and just making it happen, no matter what."
As a marriage celebrant, Ms Willis said it had been difficult seeing the North East wedding sector impacted so significantly.
"I've had one couple in particular that was meant to get married in April, 2020, and now they're on their sixth date postponement," she said.
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"Every time, it's looking good again, and we get shut down.
"Restrictions, density limits, and checking vaccination status has been very confusing for a lot of couples.
"So a lot of what we've been doing throughout this time is about trying to help people not to lose hope.
"Now, the buzz is very exciting."
