{"id":5762,"date":"2022-07-10T01:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-07-10T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/espacestudio.ca\/the-midlife-weddings-that-break-all-the-rules\/"},"modified":"2022-07-10T01:00:00","modified_gmt":"2022-07-10T05:00:00","slug":"the-midlife-weddings-that-break-all-the-rules","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/espacestudio.ca\/en\/the-midlife-weddings-that-break-all-the-rules\/","title":{"rendered":"The midlife weddings that break all the rules"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Whether you are planning a gazebo-in-the-back-garden do or meticulously colour-coded Bridgerton-inspired tablescaping, 2022 is turning out to be a boom year for weddings. Never has there been more pent-up demand.<\/p>\n

There are typically about 275,000 weddings in the UK annually, but figures from wedding industry representative body the UK Weddings Taskforce show that all those pandemic postponements have resulted in more than 330,000 taking place this year, with perhaps 880,000 in the pipeline for the next few years. Bring on those invitations, whether sent by snail mail, Paperless Post or humble WhatsApp group: we\u2019re all craving some life-affirming joy right now.<\/p>\n

Of course, much has changed in the past two years about how we can \u2013 and how we choose to \u2013 get married or civilly partnered. Lockdown may have been defined by Zoom ceremonies and micro-weddings<\/a>, but in its aftermath a new mood has swept in, with the wedding planner\u2019s traditional rule book being jettisoned and a less hidebound, more free-spirited, creative approach holding sway: think brides wearing bright colours or prints; catering comprising \u201cgrazing tables\u201d, rather than fussy waiter service.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And there is implicit permission to keep it small, if that\u2019s what you want to do \u2013 lockdown\u2019s strict rule of 30<\/a> seemingly having divested us of any embarrassment about numbers for evermore. (According to a national survey by the wedding website hitched.co.uk, pre-pandemic average numbers of invitees were 102, but this has now dipped to 72.)<\/p>\n

Smaller, looser, cost-conscious weddings are the celebrations du jour: Google searches for \u201cgarden wedding<\/a>\u201d have seen a 284 per cent increase in 2022. And, happily, last year\u2019s change in the licensing laws, permitting a wedding ceremony to take place entirely outdoors (originally a Covid thing, but so popular it has now been made permanent), means that having a do in a rustic fairy glen and getting the paperwork done in one fell swoop just got a whole lot easier.<\/p>\n

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