FIVE YEARS after the nation watched them tie the knot, Kate and Wills topped the list of Brits’ favourite celebrity weddings – beating stars like Kim Kardashian and Kanye West to the top spot.
A survey of 2,235 UK adults, carried out by One4all, the Post Office gift card, revealed it’s royal weddings leading the way.
Charles and Diana’s wedding came in at second place, followed by the marriage of Hollywood royalty, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.
Kate and Wills’ 2011 nuptials topped the list of the nation’s favourite celebrity weddings
- Top 10 celebrity weddings include Charles and Diana, Brad and Angelina, David and Victoria and Andy Murray and Kim Sears
- British married couples are mimicking Kate and Wills’ wedding habits
A-list King and Queen David and Victoria Beckham’s nuptials made it to fourth place while king of the court Andy Murray’s wedding to now-wife Kim Sears came in fifth.
Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson, George Clooney and Amal Alamuddin, Declan Donnelly and Ali Astall, Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes and Peter Andre and Katie Price complete the top 10.
The marriage between reality royalty Kim Kardashian and her rapper husband Kanye West failed to make the top 10 – coming in 12th place.
And despite the allure of the glitz and glamour of celebrity weddings, it would seem it is more traditional, regal wedding traditions that are influencing other British newlyweds planning their big day.
70% of married couples have mimicked Kate and Wills’ honeymoon habits, shunning jetting off on a post-marital holiday immediately after being wed, for a delayed break that allows the couple to properly prepare for their trip after the wedding.
Aoife Davey, marketing manager at One4all Gift Cards, said: “It’s surprising to find Brits prefer watching and reading about royal weddings over celebrities such as the Kardashians, especially as we’re constantly reminded about the rise in celebrity culture in the UK.
“It’s been five years since 2 billion people tuned in to see Prince William marry Kate Middleton, and although a royal wedding is far from reality for most, it’s refreshing to see that aspirational couples are building in the more modest, traditional aspects from royal weddings rather than the decadence of A-list nuptials and applying it to their own special day.”
Kate and William requested that those who were not attending the wedding did not send gifts – a courtesy being mimicked by their subjects, as 58% of married adults say they don’t expect guests who don’t attend the wedding to send a gift at all.
Davey added: “Charles and Diana received over 6,000 wedding gifts from members of the public, while son William and daughter-in-law Kate had a wedding list for attending guests only, and instead asked the public to make charitable donations rather than sending gifts.”
Kate and Wills’ special day was the first royal wedding of the social media age – and the happy couple weren’t shy about putting in place strict rules for guests’ social media usage.
Live Tweeting and uploading pictures to social media was banned for guests in attendance and the research shows many British couples are following suit, opting to maintain privacy on their special day - 55% say they wouldn’t want guests uploading images to social media on the day of the wedding.
28% of married couples said that they would have preferred guests to have waited for the professional photographs to be released before posting their own to social media, while 27% would have preferred for guests to at least wait until after the big day was over.
Royal experts claim that homewares were top of the wedding wish list for Kate and William, who were furnishing two houses at the time of their wedding.
And British married couples are taking the lead from the royal couple, as 1 in 5 said contributions to homewares or a house deposit were the gifts they appreciated the most.
The One4all Gift Card is available to buy from Post Offices nationwide and online at www.one4allgiftcard.co.uk, and can be spent in more than 22,000 stores across the UK.
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