Couples are increasingly opting for a dream wedding abroad research has revealed. The so called Bikini Wedding is now almost de rigueur as more and more British couples choose to tie the knot in sunnier climes.
The relentless bite of recession is giving couples a cost saving choice of almost one third if they choose a foreign wedding. A wedding at home costs as much as £20,000, however a ready organised ceremony abroad is now averaging £6,500, giving rise to a 43 per cent growth in bikini weddings over the past five years.
According to the Telegraph and market research firm Mintel as many as 51,300 British couples got married abroad in 2008, 16 per cent of the 320,000 total, up from 35,800 in 2003.
However the number of people getting married is falling. Official figures in the show that the number of marriages in the UK has shrunk to an all time low. The number of married couples is now less than 50% of the adult population.
We can expect to see the per centage of foreign weddings increase as the total number of marriages falls. With the research that has been carried out weddings abroad are projected to reach 17.7 per cent in five years time.
