Getting married by numbers
As you plan your wedding you are bound to wonder “are we spending more, or less, than the average?” Some other questions probably occur to you too – “how many guests is the norm?”, “are we older or younger than most couples tying the knot?”, “how many ceremonies and celebrations got postponed last year?” and “how unusual is it that we met through an online dating site?” In this post we answer them all, plus some. Because you need to know!
Marriage is slowly going out of fashion
According to the office for National Statistics marriage rates in England and Wales have been slowly declining for years due to changing social attitudes. In 1990, 375,410 couples tied the knot, a number that fell to 271,668 in 2017. They’ve gone on to hit a new low – the number of men and women getting married fell to 219,850. However, during 2014-2015, marriage rates experienced a small rise. How come? Legalization of same-sex marriage.
Why so many weddings right now?
The Covid pandemic obviously put a lot of weddings on hold. Over 264,000 weddings were postponed in 2020. This has created a huge backlog. The UK Wedding Taskforce expects that wedding rates will increase by 205% in the year from July 2021 – June 2022, meaning that there will be a whopping 470,000 weddings in the UK in 2021 and 350,000 in 2022 (nearly 200,000 more weddings than in pre-pandemic years!).
Get me to the church – not
Only one in five couples opt for a religious ceremony - in 2017 around 186.6 thousand civil ceremonies were conducted compared with around 48.2 thousand religious ones.
Leaving it later
People are marrying later (and that’s not just down to Covid). In 1972 the average age for men was 27.4 and 24.7. In 2019 the average for men was 38.4 and 32.3 for women.
Budget – are you frugal or extravagant?
Estimates vary, but according to the latest survey by Hitched magazine the average cost of a wedding is £17,300. This is up 90% from 2020, when the pandemic restrictions saw wedding spend drop to an average of just £9,100. Their calculations, however, don’t take into account the cost of the engagement ring, and how much couples are planning to spend on their mini-moon or honeymoon (or both).
Bridebook’s National Wedding Survey 2018 puts the figure at £30,355 (up by £3,365, or 12 per cent, from £26,989 in 2017). Not surprisingly, their latest survey shows the average cost of a wedding in 2021 was a more modest £24,000 (almost certainly due to the impact of COVID-19 and the rise of the micro-wedding and smaller, more intimate celebrations).
In 2021 the Hitched survey reveals that three in five couples had financial help from family to help pay for their wedding, with parents' footing 61% of the bill (pre-pandemic bank of Mum and Dad chipped in around 50%). Almost half of couples, 48%, went over budget in 2021.
Most popular time of year to tie the knot
The favourite month is August – makes sense when you consider the British weather!
Love online
According to Hitched a quarter of all couples who married in 2021 met through a dating app. 59% of couples also announced their engagement on social media. However, in other parts of the world this idea has yet to catch on. 55% of marriages that happen across the globe today are arranged by parents and in India, the rate of arranged marriage is a staggering 90%!
Timelines
The average length of engagement is 20 months, according to the Hitched survey. How long do couples spend planning their nuptials? 24% take more than two years over it.
Guest list
On average UK couples invite 72 people to their wedding, if Hitched has the figure right. In the US, however, weddings tend to be a lot bigger. According to The Knot Real Weddings Study, the average US wedding size in 2021 was 105 guests. This is a major increase from the 2020 figure of just 66 guests (Covid being the reason, of course), though lower than 2019's average guest count of 131 people.
How trendy are you?
There’s a growing trend for teetotal weddings with one in ten couples opting not to serve alcohol at their wedding in 2021. 12% of couples chose to adopt the American tradition of a ‘first look’ last year. Then there’s the increasing focus on sustainability - 22% of those who married in 2021 included eco-friendly elements at their wedding.
Any other questions?
We hope these figures provide some useful food for thought as you plan your wedding – if nothing else they’ll provide fun discussion points as you work through your preparations with family and friends. If you have any other questions (not just about statistics!) but any aspect of tying the knot just ask us – the team at Clevedon Hall are happy to have their brains picked!