Have you ever wondered what the name of your future spouse will be? Or, how the first name of your intended could determine if you have a lavish wedding or somewhat thrifty? This concept inspired British online marketplace, OnBuy.com to investigate –with some very interesting results.
Methodology
To achieve the figures, OnBuy.com utilised Adzuna’s ‘ValueMyName’ tool. To create the tool, Adzuna took data from over 500,000 CVs uploaded to ‘ValueMyCV’ and extracted their first name and salary. This allowed the company to provide an average (mean) salary for 1,200 first names.
What names did OnBuy input? Per ONS, the average age for opposite-sex couples to get married today is 35 (women) and 37 (men.)This means those born in 1984 will be 34-years-young in 2018 and therefore ata prime age to start thinking about marriage,or at the very least proposing!
The most popular girls’ names of 1984 were then matched together with the most popular boys’ names of 1984, and listed in order of highest to lowest combined salary, to outline a wedding pot potential.
Claire and Richard are the top “love match”for a lavish wedding –with £73,756.
OnBuy found, Claire and Richard are the highest earners on the list. If they met, fell in love and decided to marry, they would share a combined salary of £73,756.
Likewise, if Sarah marries Mark, or Paul matches with Rachel, the wedding pot potential could lift considerably, with combined earnings of£72,214 and £71,930 respectively. That is a massive wage coupling to put toward the big day and analysis reveals an average saving time of just three months*–if you’re savvy.
Other top love matches include Laura and David(£70,254), followed by Emma and Andrew(£70,083.)
The wedding pot dips for pairings like Victoria and Michael(£67,131) and Gemma and James(£65,043) but arguably, the shared amount is still more than manageable when prepping for the big day. OnBuy has outlined some of the potential costs of a wedding (figures by Bridebook.co.uk) to prove how couples may benefit from a healthy combined wage:
Venue -£5,819
Catering –£4,747
Flowers -£777
Wedding Dress -£1,329
Wedding Cake -£318
Balancing at the bottom of the list are couples like Samantha and Christopher,with a combined salary of £62,838. Followed by Rebecca and Matthew (£62,464) and lastly Amy and Daniel–sharing a total of £60,073. This combined total for Amy and Daniel means there is a difference of £13,683 when compared to the dream wedding match of Claire and Richard. Plus, an extended saving time of up to five months*, at the very least.
Wedding Costs: The Facts
Further data from Bridebook, reveals couples today are finding creative ways to reduce wedding costs.
For example, the average couple will hire professionals only when it’s necessary. 38% will ask for their wedding cake to be made by a friend, 65% of couples will opt for a paid bar rather than an open bar and up to 71% will hire a low-cost DJ rather than splash out on a live band.
5% of brides now opt for a vintage or second-hand dress, while 46% of weddings now take place on a day other than Saturday –as prices soar at the weekend.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the most expensive regions to wed in the UK are London –at an average cost of £25,450 –and South-East England, at £17,333. Whereas the least expensive regions to get married are Scotland (£13,683) and the East Midlands,at £13,461.
39% of couples will spend over-budget. Of those who overspend, most go over by 30% or less.
*Estimates based on the calculation couples are saving £17,000. This is the average wedding cost, excluding honeymoon, according to research by Bridebook.co.uk.
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