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posted by mrpg on Sunday July 30 2017, @05:55PM   Printer-friendly
from the marry-me dept.

You’re not the only one spending fewer summer weekends watching other people get married—but don’t worry, the weddings you’re still invited to might feel a little more special these days.

Fewer Americans are getting married, and the ones who still are have scaled back their weddings. Their nuptials are becoming smaller, though not necessarily cheaper, affairs.

Many couples are waiting longer and longer to schedule their weddings. In 2015, the median first-time American bride was almost 28 years old and the median groom almost 30, according to the most recent data available from the Census Bureau. (Ten years earlier, the typical bride was 25.5, the typical groom 27.)

The U.S. marriage rate—the number of new marriages per 1,000 people—has been falling for decades. It fell especially fast during the recession, in 2008 and 2009, but there’s little evidence that people started getting married again even as the economy recovered. And research firm IbisWorld predicts the marriage rate will keep falling over the next five years.

From a global perspective, that wouldn’t be a surprise. The U.S. marriage rate would need to fall by about a third to reach the marriage rates in other developed countries. The most recent data show a U.S. marriage rate of 6.9, compared with an average rate of 4.6 for countries in the European Union.

Are weaker economics the cause, or has marriage gone out of fashion?


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  • (Score: 3, Touché) by Hartree on Sunday July 30 2017, @10:35PM (1 child)

    by Hartree (195) on Sunday July 30 2017, @10:35PM (#546864)

    Because at my age, fewer of my long term friends are getting married than are dying off.

    On the plus side, few people expect elaborate funeral gifts. ;)

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Monday July 31 2017, @01:00PM

    by VLM (445) on Monday July 31 2017, @01:00PM (#547119)

    Funerals are a good analogy for weddings in that there's a whole infrastructure of people trying to sponge money off it, most events are boring and cheap, and all the media coverage is of the hyper-expensive famous ones in order to gaslight people into thinking they need to spend a zillion bucks. The music usually sucks. Also the star of the show is dressed up in a stereotypical manner unlike their normal attire. After all those similarities, in contrast, there's usually more sex after a wedding and half of weddings get annulled which is a higher "failure" rate than funerals.