Weddings on Valentine’s Day

This year, more than 16 thousand people will celebrate a wedding anniversary on Valentine’s Day. Of this group, over 600 have been married for either 12.5, 25, 40, 50 or 60 years.

Fridays and round dates

Three years ago, Valentine’s Day fell on a Friday and on a nice round date: 14/02/14. On that day, 678 couples got married, almost five times as many as on an average Friday in February that year. Even if 14 February falls on another day of the week, it is a relatively popular wedding date.

In 2017, a competitor for Tuesday the 14th was Friday the 17th (17/02/17). That day, 278 couples tied the knot. Most people prefer a wedding in the warmer months. Any Friday in summer outside the summer holidays is attractive: the top 10 weddings days of 2017 were all on a Friday. The nice round date of 07/07/17 stood out with nearly 2 thousand weddings, followed by 1 and 8 September, each with almost 1.2 thousand weddings. Other relatively popular dates in 2017 were Monday 17/07/17 (675 weddings) and Saturday 01/07/17 (651 weddings). The 17th was the most popular wedding date in each month of 2017, more than any other day, with the exception of Easter Monday, 17/04/17.
Another relatively popular wedding date was the Wednesday before Ascension Day – 24 May 2017 – with 509 weddings (three to four times more than an ordinary Wednesday in May).

Number of weddings per day, 2017

Fridays and special dates have always been popular

Friday, 07/07/17 ranks fourth in the top 10 most popular wedding dates since 1995. In recent years, around 35 percent on average of all marriages have been registered on a Friday. Only in the case of very special dates such as 09/09/99 does the day of the week seem less important. As for the winter months, the only special day is Valentine’s Day, although the total number of weddings registered on that day is still low compared to the summer months. Until 1983, December was a popular month for weddings; the tax authorities considered couples married for the whole year, even if they got married in December. As of 1984, the minimum period of six months’ cohabitation (whether married or not) became decisive.