Of course, we all know the answer – in the UK most of us plump for a summer wedding – June, July and August are the peak months for getting hitched. In fact around 40% of all UK weddings take place during these months. 13% of us marry in June, 12% in July and 14% in August. Are you surprised yet?
Yes, we are too – we thought that the figure for July weddings would be higher, when in fact there’s only 1% difference between the three months. And we carried on being surprised as we looked through the rest of the statistics, not only when we get married, but who marries, and where!
UK wedding statistics
So, we have to start by asking a bigger question – how many people actually get married in the UK every year? The last year for which we have statistics is 2020, which is not useful for reasons that we’re going to get into. Who better to ask than the Office for National Statistics – and the answer is that there were 85,770 marriages in England and Wales in 2020. Want that in perspective? Well it’s like this. The lowest number of marriages on record since 1838 was in 2019, when 219,850 couples married. That means that the figure for 2020 was a 61% decrease on the previously lowest recorded number of weddings. Two thirds lower than the previous lowest year! That should be really concerning. But of course, it’s much more complicated than that.
Most popular month for weddings
2020 was the year of the pandemic. Virtually every wedding venue was closed for some or all of this year, and the impact of limiting wedding guest numbers may have had nearly as much effect as the closing of venues – because so many couples cancelled or postponed wedding plans until they could have their friends and families around them. So judging wedding statistics from this specific year is probably quite unhelpful. But back to our averages! If we assume that 2019 was a more reliable year for statistics, then 30,779 couples married in the August, 26,382 in July and 28,581 in June.
The lowest month for weddings? January of course with just 4,397 couples marrying that month and there’s really good reasons for that:
- the weather is often at its worst in January
- it’s a month without a significant festival like St Valentines or Easter to encourage weddings
- people are experiencing a post-Christmas lack of money.
The next lowest month is February, although of course there’s a big spike around the St Valentine’s Day period, especially if St Valentine’s falls on a Saturday. Around 3% of the total, or 6,596 couples, marry in February. 4% (8794 couples) marry in March, another unpopular month, often due to the very unpredictable and difficult weather that the UK experiences in March. However for those planning a country house wedding that will take place entirely indoors, March can be a great month to get a fantastic deal and some exclusivity on an amazing venue. April is 9% of the total, with 19787 couples choosing to get hitched and in May 11% of UK couples or 23,184 get married.
We’ve already covered June, July and August, so next up is September, with 26,382 weddings, which is around the same number as June, October with 17,588 couples marrying, November with 10,992 wedding day celebrations and December with just 6% of the total, or 13,191 Xmas weddings.
So there it is……