Wedding & Civil Partnership
Statistics for the UK

Lancashire and North West Wedding, Civil Partnership & Disco Services

• The average wedding costs around £17,001, yet 45% of couples - some 117,000 nationwide - have no financial planning to pay for the big day.
  
  
• £300: What the average Brit spends just to be a guest at a wedding.
• Men are the most generous guests, spending over 30 per cent extra on the wedding gift.
• Women are born bargain hunters, they are three times more likely than men to find their gift on eBay.
• The mounting costs of the obligatory hen and stag night accounts for an added £165.
• Romantic potential at weddings helps to offset the costs, with 1.4 million meeting a partner at a wedding.
• The wedding gift of choice is revealed as the traditional sets of crockery and cutlery.
• 10 per cent of UK wedding guests admit to re-wrapping old gifts and giving them as a present.

1 You and Your Wedding Magazine – February 2005

2 Calculated by multiplying the average wedding spend by the number of people at the average wedding - 103

3 Total breakdown of wedding costs are as follows:

Travel and accommodation – £90.45
Gift – £55.60
Alcohol – £32.75
New outfit – £84.70
Hat – £9.20
Lingerie/pants – £9.20
Other expenses – £17.45

4 Total breakdown of stag or hen night are as follows:

Transport / Accommodation – £49.45
Entertainment – £32.35
Alcohol – £42.30
Food – £29.95
Comedy outfits – £9
Getting over hangover – £ 2.80
Other – £4.55

There were 306,200 weddings in the UK in 2003. This is the second successive annual increase and 4.5 per cent more than in 2002. However, there has been a long-term decline in the number of marriages since 1972.

In England and Wales there were 267,700 marriages in 2003. This is also the second successive annual increase and 4.7 per cent more than in 2002. The lowest annual number of marriages since 1897 was seen in 2001. The number of marriages in England and Wales that were the first for both partners peaked in 1970 at almost 340,000, and have since fallen to less than half this number – 158,560 in 2003.

Over the past few decades people have tended to marry later in life. The average age for first marriages in England and Wales in 2003 was 31 for men and 29 for women. This compares with 26 and 23 for men and women respectively 40 years earlier.

A rise in the number of people living together helps to explain the recent trend towards later marriage. But other factors, such as increased and longer participation in further and higher education, particularly among women, may have also contributed to it.

Remarriages rose by about a third between 1971 and 1972 following the introduction in England and Wales of the Divorce Reform Act 1969 and then leveled off. In 2003, 109,090 marriages were remarriages for one or both partners, accounting for just over two-fifths of all marriages.

Since 1992, there have been more civil marriage ceremonies in England and Wales than religious ceremonies. In 2003, 68 per cent of marriages were solemnised by civil ceremonies. The Marriage Act 1994 provided for civil marriages to take place in approved premises from 1 April 1995. In 2003, 27 per cent of all marriages in England and Wales took place in approved premises, compared with 5 per cent in 1996.

The Marriage Act 1836 and the Registration Act 1836 came into force in 1837 in England and Wales, and provided the statutory basis for regulating and recording marriages. There were 118,000 marriages during the first full year of civil registration in 1838 in England and Wales. Annual numbers of marriages rose steadily from the 1840s to the 1940s, apart from peaks and troughs in and around the years of the two World Wars.

Civil partnership registrations

June 2006

Same sex couples formed 6,516 Civil Partnerships in England and Wales by 31 March 2006.
Male couples formed 4,311 Civil Partnerships and female couples formed 2,205.

The Civil Partnership Act allows same-sex couples to make a formal, legal commitment to each other by entering into a civil partnership through a statutory civil registration procedure.

A range of rights and responsibilities will flow from entering a civil partnership. Provisions in the Act include:

• • Employment and pension benefits;
• • Equitable treatment for the purposes of life assurance;
• • A duty to provide reasonable maintenance for your civil partner and any children of the family;
• • Civil partners to be assessed in the same way as spouses for child support;
• • Recognition under intestacy rules;
• • Access to fatal accidents compensation;
• • Recognition for immigration and nationality purposes.

For tax purposes, civil partners will be treated the same as married couples. From the start of the civil partnership tax charges and relief's and anti-avoidance rules will apply equally to married couples and civil partners, and those treated as such.

In general it is the intention that any benefits available to married spouses should now be made available to civil partners.

Cost of registering a civil partnership

Giving notice in advance of registering a civil partnership
£30.00 per person

Registering a civil partnership at a register office
£40.00

Registering a civil partnership on approved premises
The cost for attendance by a civil partnership registrar is set by the registration authority in question.

A further charge is likely to be made by the owners of the building for the use of the premises.

A NATIONAL STATISTICS PUBLICATION

Marriages registered in 2004

Number of marriages
There were 8,328 marriages registered in Northern Ireland in 2004, an increase of 571
marriages or 7% on the 2003 figure of 7,757 marriages. The increase in the number
of marriages in 2004 was largely confined to civil ceremonies, the number of which
rose by 490 (23%), while the number of religious ceremonies rose by 81 (1%);
The number of marriages has increased over the last few years, with an overall
increase of more than 1,000 marriages between 2001 and 2004. This increase
contrasts with the decline in the number of marriages between 1970 and 2000; the
number of marriages in 2004 has now risen to a similar level to that in 1996;

Bride and Groom
More than three-quarters (78%) of marriages were the first marriage for both bride
and groom, 14% of marriages was a first marriage for one partner only and the
remaining 8% of marriages was a remarriage for both bride and groom;
The average age at marriage has increased markedly in last two decades. Both single
brides and single grooms are now on average five years older than their counterparts
twenty years ago;
For the first time ever the average age at marriage for all brides was over 30 years of
age (30.1 years). This compares to 27.2 years in 1994 and 24.4 years in 1984. The
average age for the groom was over 32 years of age (32.4 years), an increase of
three years from 1994 (29.3 years) and just under six years from 1984 (26.6 years);

Type of ceremony
More than 30% of all marriages (2,624) in 2004 were civil ceremonies compared to
14% in 1984 and 6% in 1926;
Of the 5,704 religious marriages in 2004, 52% were Roman Catholic ceremonies; 21%
Presbyterian, 16% Church of Ireland, 4% Methodist and 7% 'Other denominations';

Place of ceremony
The Marriage (Northern Ireland) Order 2003 now allows civil marriage ceremonies to
be conducted outside registrar's offices in a number of approved venues. In 2004,
323 civil marriage ceremonies (12% of all civil marriage ceremonies) were held in
approved venues. The most popular location was Belfast Castle (52 civil weddings);
The ability to conduct religious marriage ceremonies other than in religious buildings
varies by religion and denomination. In 2004, 206 religious marriage ceremonies (4%
of all religious marriage ceremonies) were held outside of religious buildings. The
most popular location (other than religious buildings) for religious ceremonies was the
Crawfordsburn Inn (36 marriages);

Marriage day
The most common day of the week for all marriages is a Saturday (38%). Friday is
the most common day for civil marriages (34%); and
The most common month to get married was August (1,288 couples) closely followed
by July (1,111 couples). Saturday 21st August 2004 was the most popular day in the
year 2004 to get married, 119 couples got married on that date. Only 22 marriages
took place on a Sunday in 2004, three of which were civil marriages – the latter only
became possible under the new legislation.

Church Weddings are dying out.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1894660.stm

Civil Weddings and "The God Ban".

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4086690.stm