Marriage has been a staple of our society for many thousands of years. The idea and significance behind marriage has definitely changed over that time. However, another aspect of marriage that has also drastically changed is the age at when people are deciding to tie the knot. People are getting married later and when you take the reasons into consideration, it's pretty easy to understand why.
Marriage is undeniably the ultimate avenue to declare undying love and for religious followers, the need for marriage is of great importance. However, for everyone else, it's becoming more and more unnecessary to jump straight into marriage.
In 1970, around 80% of brides were believed to be under 25 years old. However, that was a figure that fell drastically to 14% by 2012. Likewise, the number of grooms aged under 25 fell by more than 90% across that same period and whilst over 60,000 teenage girls were wedded in the 1980s, that's a figure that now only stands at 3,000. Marriage is undeniably a dying trend amongst young people.
However, it's not that these young people won't ever go on to get married, they'll just quite simply leave it later, until their 30s, 40s or possibly even later.
With marriage now starting to hold less and less significance, it's pretty easy to see why young people in particular are leaving marriage for a later date. Undeniably the biggest contributing factor towards that is the extortionate cost of marriage. The average wedding cost now comes in at around £30,000, which for most young people is money that could be much better spent on a deposit for their first home.
You might think the simple solution is a scaled back wedding ceremony, however, there's now a lot of pressure for the big day to be extra special. Whether it's the need to hire a professional photographer or buy the most impressive dress money can buy, weddings are becoming something of a competition and if you're not going to go big with it, what's the point in getting married at all?
The sensible solution for many young couples is to simply put off their wedding. We're now living longer than ever before, so is there really any need to rush into a marriage ceremony and spend an awful lot of money in the process?
Getting married is undeniably a very special occasion, but it isn't something we need to rush into. Many young couples already cohabit and share every aspect of their lives, which questions the need for marriage altogether. Whilst marriage might be an event of religious importance, no God states that it's something that can't be postponed. The simple case for many young people is that spending £30,000+ on an extortionate marriage ceremony just isn't feasible.
Marriage later in life is a fantastic option and one that every young couple should consider, especially if they plan on spending their lives together either way.