In our continuing discussion on the state of our industry we wanted to share a recent article from Bloomberg.
The decline in the marriage rate has been falling for decades and research firm IbisWorld predicts the marriage rate will keep falling over the next five years. What may be more alarming is that the U.S. marriage rate would need to fall by about a third to mirror marriage rates in other developed countries. For comparison, most recent data show a U.S. marriage rate of 6.9, compared with an average rate of 4.6 for countries in the European Union. The number of U.S. weddings did fall last year by 0.5 percent to 2.162 million, according to estimates by the Wedding Report.
About 310,000 businesses in the U.S. provide services at weddings, according to IbisWorld, and many of them—from florists to bakers to photographers—are feeling the economic pain. Industry growth slowed in 2015, and revenue actually dipped slightly last year. Over the next five years, IbisWorld expects an annual growth rate of just 0.3 percent.
While the average wedding cost $26,720 in 2016, according to the Wedding Report which was up just 0.3 percent from the previous year. Don’t be confused by the $25K+ average budget that you often see. That’s the mean average which is inflated by a few very high-dollar weddings.The important number to look at is the median cost of weddings. The median average wedding budget is now less than $15K. That equates to only 1 in 10 weddings is more than $30K.
Another way weddings have changed since the recession: They’ve shrunk. Last year’s average wedding had 141 guests, according to an annual survey of couples by the Knot. That’s down from 149 guests in 2009.
It’s unclear whether the decline of the American wedding is a permanent trend. American millennials lag previous generations on many metrics; from living on their own to buying homes to having kids. Maybe most of them will eventually get around to weddings of their own—but then it’s possible that many never will, and that they’ll bring the U.S. marriage rate closer to Europe’s.
Read the full article here!
