Rise of the older bride: Average age for women to marry is now over 35

WOMEN are waiting longer than ever to wed – with the average age passing 35 for the first time, it emerged yesterday.

The odds of couples tying the knot at all have also fallen to their lowest level in more than 150 years, with the idea of marrying falling out of favour among the young.

Only four in ten brides were under 30 in England and Wales in 2015, the Office for National Statistics revealed.

Of couples who do get hitched, nearly nine in ten lived together beforehand.

The findings led to calls for the Government to encourage more couples to marry, and to try to limit sky-high breakup rates among unmarried families.

Commentators said a generation of women face growing pressure as they try to maintain careers, pay mortgages, marry and raise children in their thirties and forties.

The ONS figures showed there were 239,020 marriages of opposite-sex couples in 2015, a fall of 3.4 per cent on the previous year.

The number was even 0.8 per cent down on 2013 – the year when many couples are thought to have postponed their weddings to avoid any connection with the number 13. The marriage rate – the number of people who wed among those available to do so – was the lowest since matrimony records were first collected in 1862.

Out of every 1,000 unwed men, 21.7 married – a quarter of the level in 1972, when marriage was at the height of its popularity.

Among women, the rate was 19.8 for every 1,000 – less than a third of the figure in 1972.

Older couples, however, are marrying more frequently.

Nicola Haines, of the ONS, said: ‘Marriage rates for opposite- sex couples are at their lowest level on record following a gradual longterm decline since the seventies.’

The peacetime peak for marriage was 1972, when 426,000 couples in England and Wales wed. The 2015 level suggests that numbers may now be heading down to below their lowest ever figure of 232,000 in 2009. The average age of a bride was 24 in 1970 and passed 30 in 1994. Last year for the first time it went above 35, to 35.1.

In 2015, 87.7 per cent of men and women in opposite-sex marriages had lived together beforehand. The ONS has said the factors forcing people to delay marriage include the decisions of many women to put their careers before marriage and family, housing costs, the increasing difficulty of forming committed relationships, and the cost of having children.

Harry Benson, of the Marriage Foundation, said: ‘Britain already languishes in shame at the bottom of the developed-world league table for family stability.

‘ Future generations will not thank us for our foolish disregard for commitment and stability.’

Thomas Pascoe, of the Coalition For Marriage, said: ‘It is time the Government stopped pandering to a minority who say all relationships are equal, and start backing this important institution within the education and tax systems.’

But the Reverend Dr Sandra Millar, the Church of England’s head of weddings, said: ‘People are marrying later and some not at all. But our vicars find couples taking it seriously and really wanting to make it work.

‘Where once couples might have seen marriage as the beginning of their life together, now they now see it as the crown on their relationship.’