Cake expectations
From 00s romcoms to Love Is Blind, walking down the aisle seems wedded to everlasting love – but the data suggests more of us are saying ‘I don’t.’ As wedding season kicks off, one single writer asks if her generation has fallen out of love with marriage
The year I turned 28, I was a bridesmaid for two of my school friends. This was the age that as teens –informed by 00s romcoms and celebrity tabloid love stories – we’d deemed to be just right for marriage. We saw 30 as ‘over the hill’, when women became ‘spinsters’ and were forced to date Nigel from accounts. Neither of those marriages lasted a year, owing to the friction between people who hadn’t ironed out things like career ambitions and division of labour. But those divorces didn’t detract from the fact that legally binding love had been written into our life scripts.
Seven years on, millennial marriage statistics suggest that my generation –now aged between 28 and 43 – aren’t as wedded to the institution as we once were. First, we’re tying the knot later, with the latest Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures revealing that the average age for men and women getting married is now 35.3 and 33.2 years, respectively. We’re also calling it a day much younger – the average age for divorce is 46 for men and 44 for women. Meanwhile, swathes of the population are now cohabiting – in January, for the first time, the proportion of people married or in a civil partnership dropped below 50% in England and Wales for the first time.
These statistics are playing out in my own network; one woman I know is posting in real time as the paperwork to disentangle her and her husband progresses. And yet, they don’t tell the full story; another woman I know – a 35-year-old divorcee – is preparing to wed again nearly a decade after her first time. Like love, our relationship with marriage is complicated. So, as we prepare to mark another marquee season, I want to know why.
IN SICKNESS?
Like so many stories, this one begins with the pandemic. While the UK’s £14.7bn wedding industry is well on its way to being fully revived after the lockdowns, Covid tested our relationship with time. The so-called ‘pandemic skip’ wreaked havoc on the timelines surrounding settling down. For me, losing those few years in my early thirties – which would have been spent on nights out, dating and holidays with friends pre-motherhood –has meant that, at 36, I feel the lack of those fun years and am convinced I’m too young to be married, but am single and on the clock if I want children. I’m not alone – some married women I know are already horrified that their suddenly-middle-aged lives have arrived prematurely. Then there’s the fact that the pandemic heralded a wave of break-ups. While research h
