After decades of decline, marriage in the UK is coming back into favour. Government statistics show that the number of weddings has been rising for several years. The reasons for this include a rise in immigration – marriage tends to be more popular among migrant populations; also, people are waiting longer before getting married, which leads to more stable relationships. “Pre-nup” agreements may also have played a part, as people are more willing to take the risk of getting married. There has also been a rise in the number of weddings among over-65s. To celebrate this turnaround, here is a selection of curious facts and figures around marriage and weddings.
A Brief History of Weddings
The human custom of getting married goes back into the mists of pre-history. There are records of dowry agreements going back nearly 5,000 years to ancient Babylon. We know that marriage was popular among Egyptian royalty – and that in order to preserve the bloodline, they often married their relatives, including siblings (Cleopatra married two of her brothers).
Polygamous relationships were the norm in many societies for thousands of years; the idea of an exclusive marital union between two people is quite recent. And it’s only relatively recently, since the 16th and 17th centuries, that love has come to play a role in marriage: previously, marriages were mostly about power, property and procreation.
Curiously, although for many centuries almost all marriage ceremonies in western societies took place in churches, the Bible has almost nothing to say about marriage. Essentially, Christian churches took “ownership” of marriage, which was previously a civil, local and non-religious affair. In many cultures, prior to the intervention of religion, couples who wanted to be married would simply move in together.
Vows with a Wow Factor
Since the law covering where weddings could take place was relaxed, the number of venues hiring themselves out has soared. From the restricted era of church-vs-register office, couples now have a kaleidoscope of potential venues, including a submarine at the Royal Navy Submarine Museum in Gosport, Hampshire; the 39th storey of London’s Gherkin building; lighthouses; the Great North Museum’s Dinosaur Museum in Newcastle; Dulwich Picture Gallery in south London; and a Napoleonic fort in Cornwall.
Weird Wedding Customs
In Britain, there are many customs surrounding the wedding ceremony that are still observed: the bride throwing her bouquet, for instance. This has its origins in the days when a scrap or a fragment of the wedding dress was thought to bring good fortune, so the bride would be surrounded by a scrum of women tearing at her dress.
She would toss her bouquet as a distraction. This, however, is tame compared with some customs from elsewhere in the world. In Germany, for instance, some newlyweds will cut through a log using a double-handled saw at the ceremony – this represents the first obstacle that they will overcome together. On the Marquesas Islands of French Polynesia, after the wedding reception is over, the relatives of the bride all lay side by side in the dirt, face down. The bride and groom then walk across them. In Denmark, the groom is hoisted into the air and his socks are cut off at the toes. This is apparently done to give his new wife her first chore.
The Chair That’s Everywhere
If you go to a wedding in Britain or the US, there is a good chance that you will find yourself sitting on a Chiavari chair. This popular design has been around for nearly 200 years and originated in the seaside town of that name in Liguria in Italy, where a whole region became dedicated to its manufacture. It was designed in the “empire style”, which aimed to bring about a return to the values and aesthetics of the ancient Roman empire. Production of the chairs declined as cheaper mass-produced chairs became available, but the Chiavari chair has regained popularity in recent years, especially among wedding venues: lightweight but robust, decorative but not too ornate, and available in various finishes (limewash is currently popular). Crucially, it’s stackable, too. They are now mostly manufactured elsewhere, although there are still some chair manufacturers remaining in Chiavari and its surroundings.
Same-Sex Marriages
In ancient Greece and Rome, where homosexuality was widely accepted, same-sex unions were quite common; indeed, Emperor Nero was married to a man. In medieval Europe, same-sex unions were not unusual, although it is thought that these were a kind of “male bonding” ceremony rather than actual marriages. The first country in the world to introduce a law legalising same-sex marriages was The Netherlands, in 2001.
Since then 20 countries have followed suit, including the UK in March 2014. Perhaps the most high-profile British same-sex wedding took place in December 2014 between Elton John and his then civil partner David Furnish. It was a modest affair; photographs released by Elton John on Instagram show guests at the ceremony seated at what appear to be Chiavari chairs (see above).
Strange Bedfellows
Many of us have been to weddings where we find ourselves secretly thinking, “What do they see in each other?” But some weddings have involved some deeply peculiar partnerships. In Florida in 2015 Derek Mishov “married” himself at a ceremony attended by his parents, daughter and friends. Mishov’s main reason for marrying himself was that “I love myself”. He also made some deeply derogatory comments about his ex-wife and about women in general. The ceremony had no legal status. Meanwhile in 2006 a woman in a village in India’s Orissa state married a cobra that lived in a nearby anthill. The snake could not be located for the ceremony, so a brass replica was used instead. The bride, Bimbala Das, said, “Though snakes cannot speak or understand, we communicate in a peculiar way.”
The Price of Love
As the number of marriages rises, the cost of getting married is rising, too. The average British wedding now costs around £25,000, according to a survey of 3,000 readers by the website hitched.co.uk. As you’d expect, the biggest expense is the hire of the venue, including marquee hire, wedding furniture purchase and hire, and so on. The total value of the wedding industry in the UK is around £10 billion.
Entertainment is also part of the cost of a wedding, and for those thinking of splashing out and hiring a band, rather than a mere DJ, some of the world’s biggest pop stars are available, though at a price: The Rolling Stones are said to command £5 million for a wedding, and they stipulate that they must be on tour at the time of the festivities.
One of the most opulent weddings in history took place in 2004 between Vanisha Mittal, daughter of Indian steel billionaire Lakshmi Mittal, and her fiancé, banker Amit Bhatia. The wedding, which cost around $60 million, took place in France (after guests had been flown in from around the world by private jet) and lasted six days. Entertainment included a performance from Kylie Minogue, who is said to charge up to £2 million for a wedding show.
But it’s not just weddings that can carry a hefty price tag. Divorce, too, is an expensive business, as Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev discovered when he and his wife Elena parted company in 2015; the settlement is said to have cost him $4.5 billion, making it the most expensive divorce in history.