I was elated when my partner proposed. It marked our commitment. The fact that we want to stay together indefinitely. But a wedding? I didn’t know when we’d have one – if ever. As our relationship has progressed against the economic landscape of the early 2020s, our late-thirties birthdays ticking away, any kind of “big day” has been dwarfed by the two more concrete milestones we’re ticking off this year: buying a house together and having a baby.
Giles and I were in our mid-to-late thirties when we met, which rather crams life’s to-do list into a tighter time frame. I’ll be 37 when I give birth; he’ll be 41. I would love to have more than one child – if we’re able to. Two years after we met, we wanted to crack on with trying to conceive for many reasons: not knowing how things would pan out, fertility-wise, but to have as much energy as we could as parents of young kids, too. Amid thoughts of marriage, we also had the cash-burning experience of buying our first house together – something that wiped out any savings I had, even after lowering the cost by moving outside of London.
In the same year as getting engaged, moving house and giving birth, it was exhausting to even think about a wedding – even if we’d had the funds ready. It was the classic late thirties life crush: too much on the agenda, and no leisurely decade or bottomless pot of cash to do it all with. Something had to give, and for me it was a wedding. Once I opened up to friends about shelving the wedding, I realised I was far from alone. Plenty of couples in their thirties are shuffling life’s deck of cards and throwing out the traditional order.
Emma, 34, has been with her fiance for four years. This year they decided to have a baby, and then buy a house together, with the wedding date a firm TBC. “We know we love each other. We could go down to the registry office and do it tomorrow,” she says. “But when we laid out our priorities in life, marriage was the last thing on our list.”
The pair had got engaged in 2022, but in lieu of wedding planning decided to start trying for a baby shortly after. “For me, the engagement is enough of a commitment,” Emma tells me. They also wanted to stay living in London for work reasons, adding another layer of cost to their property hunt. She’s relaxed about the wheres and whens: “We might decide down the line that it’s never the right time to spend that amount of money on a wedding.” Big-day planning could be on the cards, Emma says, once their baby is a year old, or a little more. “But then, that rolls over, doesn’t it?” she points out. “If you’d like two kids, do you try and squeeze in a wedding after the first one or do you just get going on the second?”
Along with age and fertility, cost is certainly a top factor in this “later or never” approach to marriage. According to the national wedding survey 2024 by Hitched, 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 the state of the economy had impacted their plans or budget. Recent news that the average deposit for a first-time homebuyer is an eye-watering £53,414 – around 19 per cent of the purchase price – might put that £15k plus into perspective.
We’ve also experienced life a lot more. I look back at travels I’ve had in the past few years, and think: we probably could have paid for a wedding. We chose to go and have life experiences instead
Rosie
For me and my fiance, now counting down the 16 weeks until our little one joins us, splashing £20k on a single day feels like actively taking food out of our child’s mouth, or a portion of roof from over its head (not to mention the spectre of UK nursery fees, something every expectant mother I know is hoping the new Labour government will help ease). You want to start the newborn journey with savings, not feeling financially cleaned out, however nice the white-dress photos are. Based on current trends, Civitas has predicted that by 2062 just one couple for every 400 UK adults will get married, compared to one couple for every 100 adults today — that’s 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 never really factored into 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 gave a second thought to the order we did it in,” she says. “For us, it was more, what do we care about? What do we know would make us happy?”
Beth wonders if the fact that she and her partner each had parents who had divorced informed their decision; like me, she also lacks any spiritual connection to the ceremony. “If you strip away the romance from marriage, or the concept of it being this special experience, what is it?” she asks. “We always say it’s just surviving the average Wednesday together. When life is boring and you haven’t got any holidays booked and your roof is leaking, do you still want to be in the same room as that person? That’s marriage, for us.”
I felt a small glow of recognition at this surprisingly romantic statement. But are we missing out? I almost never regret our decision to skip the I-dos and go “straight to baby”. But once or twice watching a friend at their wedding, all glowing and carefree – the look of a woman who categorically does not have to check in with the babysitter tonight – I do get a little pang of longing.
In a more practical vein, my friend Rosie, 36, raises the issue of shared names and financial protection. She and her partner got engaged in 2019, had one child in 2020 and a second in 2023, but never got married. “Now my eldest is starting school, I’m conscious that he doesn’t share my surname,” she says. “From an admin perspective, I would like to get that done, so we all share a name and there aren’t any obstacles there.” Though the pair are blissfully happy at present, Rosie adds: “I’m aware I’m pretty unprotected if we split up”.
This is where the “motherhood penalty” kicks in – as with so many couples, it made sense for Rosie to hit the brakes on her career in order to make parenthood financially viable. “I have gone back to work part-time while my partner has stayed in full-time employment, saving us lots of money as a family on childcare costs. I also stayed in a job that gave me a certain amount of maternity leave and flexibility, but as a result my salary is not high and I have sacrificed promotion and earning potential along the way.” If the two were to go their separate ways, she worries, “I have no way of recouping the money I’ve lost because of that family arrangement”.
Emma suggests that not needing the marital stamp of approval could be a sign of more emotional security in the relationship, not less. Perhaps, as women settling down in our thirties, we feel we have less to prove. “We meet partners a lot later in life than our parents did – perhaps we’re more content because we’ve waited longer to find them?” she says. “We’ve also experienced life a lot more. I look back at travels I’ve had in the past few years, 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 big spend of a wedding. For me, a full-blown wedding day has slipped to about the same ranking as getting a hot tub installed in the garden – I know we’d both enjoy it, and our friends and family certainly would, but it would cost a bomb and it’s hardly a financial priority. But perhaps the aura of marriage hasn’t completely burned out. Checking in with Rosie a week after our chat, it turns out we’ve both been googling the same thing: where’s the nearest registry office?