That anxiety of not knowing... any advice or thoughts for someone scared to even set a date right now

Thats a good idea! Thank you!

Oh that's too bad. They must have had some bad experiences hosting weddings. Restaurants might also be a good option?

Thank you! That really helps because I feel like I am talking myself into a corner. I tried to reach out to some non-traditional vendors but they insisted that they do not do weddings anymore. As an example, there is a greenhouse locally that has a really nice property (they did a couple weddings but it's not their regular thing) and they said they are not doing any more weddings (i asked about 2023 and they said no more ever). I am going to keep looking and I appreciate the suggestion! If you have any ideas please do send them my way.

Unfortunately we're in a time where there isn't a lot of certainty and there isn't much we can do about it. 2022 will almost certainly be better than 2020 and 2021 and potentially even somewhat normal so try to hope for the best. I'm sort of in the same boat in that my husband and I got engaged December 2019 and planned for a November 2020 wedding. We obviously had to postpone our reception but we still got married. We aren't willing to start re-planning our reception and choose a new date until we have a better idea of what's going to happen. It feels a bit like we're in limbo but I just don't have the energy to plan again during the pandemic.

But if you want to go full steam ahead I would recommend planning for everything that you can control and thinking of workarounds or just letting go the things you can't. For example, you can control how many people you invite to your wedding and make it intentional. If you plan for an intimate wedding of 40 people then you're not going to be disappointed if there are gathering limits of 50 or 100 and you've planned for 150. Something you can't control is restrictions on international travel. Hopefully travel will start to become more normal later this year and next year, but it's possible some people you wanted to be at your wedding just can't make it if they live in another country. As long as their non-attendance isn't a deal breaker, you can still plan and make decisions but you'll know it's possible they won't make it.

As far as the venues go it's really weird that they won't give you a price. Usually vendors want to lock you in early to get your deposit and know they have business coming up. Have you tried looking into non-traditional venues? They typically require a bit more legwork in that you bring in your own vendors but they might not have been hit as hard by the pandemic and can probably give you more solid numbers.