Why fewer people got married in 2024

At first, many of us wedding suppliers kept quiet about this; perhaps for fear of perpetuating the problem, perhaps out of concern that we were the only ones with a scarily empty calendar. But little by little it came to be acknowledged that 2024 was an unusually quiet year for weddings. The dramatic drop in bookings was all the more marked when compared to the previous two years, which were, unsurprisingly, exceptionally busy thanks to the overflow from the pandemic years. So what’s the explanation? Here at The Gospel Project we assumed at first that it was purely driven by the cost of living crisis – and that certainly didn’t help, with hotel prices in particular at an all-time high. Another contributing factor, from a supplier point of view at least, was the trend towards smaller and non-traditional weddings. But it took another supplier – who, as it happens, is also a statistician! – to point out the real explanation: there’s a cycle of roughly 3-4 years from the time a couple meets, to when they typically get married. Except couples didn’t meet during the lockdowns, which went on considerably longer in the Republic of Ireland than in many other countries. So when you think about it, it’s fairly logical that not many people got married here in 2024, because not many new partnerships formed in 2020 and 2021. One of the many unforeseen impacts of the global shutdown. #weddings #weddingplanning #2024 weddings #ceremonymusic #weddingceremonyideas