Men holding off until they turn 35 to tie the knot

Higher rent, decline in churchgoing and a focus on careers blamed on the rising age of bridegrooms

MEN are waiting until they are 35 to get married as rising rents and wedding costs are prompting couples to push back the big day, figures have revealed.

According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the average age of couples getting married is higher than at any point on record.

Commenters said the “vast expense” of renting, along with a decline in churchgoing and the lure of career progression, were key explanations behind the increase.

The figures were also likely to have been pushed up by Covid, as couples opted to delay their weddings until they could celebrate without lockdown restrictions.

On average, the age for getting married is 35.3 for men and 33.2 for women, an increase from 34.3 and 32.9, respectively, just a year previously.

Amanda Sharfman, of the ONS, said: “Costs of setting up family life as well as weddings themselves could be a factor.

“There have been changing attitudes to marriage itself and cohabitation as precursor, or alternative, to marriage is more commonplace. Similarly, increasingly we are seeing babies being born outside of a legal partnership.”

Matthew Booth, a family solicitor at Payne Hicks Beach, said that financial pressures meant marriage was falling out of favour with those in their 20s.

He told The Daily Telegraph: “Younger people don’t have the resources that they feel they need to get married in terms of deposits for houses, because they’ve been renting at vast expense.

“There’s a financial disincentive as they see it because they feel they don’t have the bedrock.

“Equally, there are other changes – people want to get their careers under way and to feel more economically in place before they commit to a legal relationship.”

Mr Booth added that the decline of religion among younger people was another reason for the rising average age of those getting married.

He said: “The influence of churchgoing, that sort of imperative that the only way of having a relationship of this nature is to marry.

“In the 1970s it was, I suspect, controversial to have a cohabiting relationship because society, religion and the state expected young people to marry – that was the forum for an intimate relationship.

“Now I just don’t think that young people see the need.”

The proportion of married men who marry by the time they turn 30 has collapsed to 159 per 1,000, from 194 per 1,000 the year before. Around 50 years ago, the figure stood at 615 per 1,000.

For the first time ever, the proportion of people getting divorced overtook those getting married – a factor put down to the impact of coronavirus restrictions. There were 7.4 marriages per 1,000 unmarried men and 7.0 marriages per 1,000 unmarried women compared with 8.5 divorces per 1,000 married men and 8.6 divorces per 1,000 married women.

Abby Buckland, a family lawyer, said: “The fact is that people live together first, unmarried, and they do so for longer. And I think people are slightly more cautious of marriage now because of increasing divorce rates.

“And so they sit it out and are cohabitees with one another for longer.”