Statistics

Have you ever found yourself wondering if there’s a ‘right’ age to get married? A recent study by Hillier Jewellers has looked at the average age of marriage across the country to see at what stage in life people are likely to tie the knot.

If you’re planning a wedding, chances are you’ve looked back at family wedding photos and realised how young your parents or grandparents were on their wedding day. Now, it’s common for couples to wait until they’ve travelled the world or established themselves in their careers before deciding to take the next step. Back in the 70’s the average age of marriage was 28.6 for men and 29.5 for women, so how does it look over 40 years later?

In 2015, there were 3.1 million opposite sex and 90,000 same sex couples cohabiting in the UK, according to data from the Office of National Statistics. Cohabiting couples are the fastest growing type of family in the UK: from 2005 to 2015, there has been an increase from 14% to 17% of opposite sex couples making up the total number of families, and an increase of 0.3% to 0.5% for those of the same sex.