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Yo I was so happy when my partner proposed. It marked our commitment. The fact that we want to be together indefinitely. But a wedding? I didn’t know when we’d have one, if ever. As our relationship has moved through the economic landscape of the early 2020s, and our late 30s birthdays draw closer, any sort of “big day” has been overshadowed by the two more concrete milestones we’re marking this year: buying a house together and having a baby.
Giles and I were both in our late 30s and early 40s when we met, which makes the bucket list a little tight. I’ll be 37 when I give birth, he’ll be 41. I’d love to have more than one child, if we can. Two years after meeting, we wanted to go ahead with trying to conceive for many reasons – we didn’t know how things would turn out fertility-wise, but also to have as much energy as possible as parents of young children. While we were thinking about getting married, we also had the experience of spending money on buying our first house together, which wiped out all the savings I had, even after reducing the cost by moving out of London.
In the same year that we got engaged, moved house, and gave birth, it was exhausting to even think about a wedding, even if we had the funds in place. It was the classic 30-something life-crush: too much on the agenda and no decade of leisure or bottomless pot of money to do it all. Something had to give, and in my case it was a wedding. Once I told my friends I was postponing the wedding, I realized I wasn’t alone. Many 30-something couples are shuffling life’s cards and throwing traditional order out the window.
Emma, 34, has been with her fiancé for four years. This year they decided to have a baby and then buy a house together, and the wedding date is yet to be confirmed. “We know we love each other. We could go to the registry office and do it tomorrow,” she says. “But when we defined our priorities in life, marriage was the last thing on our list.”
The couple had been engaged in 2022, but instead of planning the wedding they decided to start trying for a baby soon after. “For me, the commitment is commitment enough,” Emma tells me. They also wanted to continue living in London for work, which would add another level of cost to their property search. She’s not serious about the wheres and whens: “We might decide in the future that it’s never the right time to spend that kind of money on a wedding.” Planning for the big day could be in the cards, Emma says, once their baby is a year old, or a little older. “But then that carries over, doesn’t it?” she notes. “If you want two kids, do you try to get married after the first one or do you get on with the second?”
Along with age and fertility, cost is certainly a big factor in this “later or never” approach to marriage. According to Hitched’s 2024 National Wedding Survey, the average UK wedding costs £20,700. In the survey, 65 per cent of couples said they were spending more than £15,000 on the celebration, while 48 per cent admitted that the state of the economy had affected their plans or budget. The recent news that the average deposit for a first-time home buyer is an exorbitant £53,414 (around 19 per cent of the purchase price) might put that extra £15,000 into perspective.
We've also experienced life a lot more. I look back on the trips I've taken over the past few years and think: we probably could have afforded a wedding. We chose to go and have life experiences instead.
Rosie
For me and my fiancé, as we count down the 16 weeks until our little one is born, spending £20,000 in a single day is like taking food from our child or a chunk of the roof over our heads (not to mention the spectre of UK nursery fees, something every expectant mother I know hopes the new Labour government will help alleviate). You want to start your newborn journey with savings, not feeling financially devastated, however pretty the photos in your white dress. Based on current trends, Civitas has predicted that by 2062 only one couple in every 400 UK adults will marry, compared with one couple in every 100 adults today – a drop of more than 70 per cent in two generations.
For Beth, 39, who is in a long-term relationship and has a four-year-old son, “marriage was never a big factor in the conversation”. A few years into their 14-year relationship, she and her partner bought a house near Manchester and then had a baby in 2020. “I honestly don’t think I ever thought about the order in which we did it,” she says. “For us, it was more like: what do we care about? What do we know would make us happy?”
Beth wonders if the fact that she and her partner had divorced parents influenced her decision; like me, she also lacks any spiritual connection to the ceremony. “If you take the romance out of marriage, or the concept of it being a special experience, what is it?” she asks. “We always say it’s just about surviving a normal Wednesday together. When life is boring and you don’t have a holiday booked and you have a leaky roof, do you still want to be in the same room as that person? To us, that’s marriage.”
I felt a small glow of recognition at this surprisingly romantic declaration. But are we missing something? I almost never regret our decision to skip the “I do” and go “straight to the baby.” But once or twice seeing a friend at her wedding, all beaming and carefree—the look of a woman who categorically does not have to stop by the babysitter that night—I feel a small pang of nostalgia.
On a more practical note, my friend Rosie, 36, raises the issue of shared surnames and financial protection. She and her partner got engaged in 2019, had a child in 2020 and a second in 2023, but never married. “Now that my eldest son is starting school, I’m aware that he doesn’t share my surname,” she says. “From an administrative perspective, I’d like to do it, so that we all share a surname and there’s no obstacle.” Although the couple are happy at the moment, Rosie adds: “I’m aware that I’m quite unprotected if we split up.”
This is where the “motherhood penalty” comes in: As with so many couples, it made sense for Rosie to put her career on hold to make motherhood financially viable. “I’ve gone back to working part-time while my partner has stayed in full-time employment, which has saved us a lot of money as a family on childcare costs. I’ve also continued in a job that gave me a certain amount of maternity leave and flexibility, but my salary isn’t high as a result and I’ve sacrificed promotions and earning potential along the way.” If the two were to go their separate ways, she worries, “I’d have no way of recouping the money I’ve lost because of that family arrangement.”
Emma suggests that not needing the marital seal of approval might be a sign of greater emotional security in the relationship, not less. Perhaps, as women settling into their thirties, we feel we have less to prove. “We meet our partners much later in life than our parents did; maybe we’re more content because we’ve waited longer to find them,” she says. “We’ve also experienced life much more. I look back and think: we probably could have paid for a wedding. We chose to go and have life experiences instead.”
We agree that there are two components to this: marriage in the legal sense and the huge expense of a wedding. For me, a full-fledged wedding day has become more or less the same as installing a hot tub in the garden. I know we would both enjoy it, and our friends and family would certainly do so, but it would cost a fortune and it is not a financial priority. But perhaps the aura of marriage has not died out entirely. Speaking to Rosie a week after our chat, it turns out that we have both been Googling the same thing: where is the nearest registry office?
