Younger Irish couples have bigger weddings, survey finds

The younger you are, the bigger your wedding.

Young married Irish people have had larger weddings than their older counterparts, according to a new poll, and are likely to have invited more friends than family to their celebration.

A poll carried out by Ipsos MRBI on behalf of The Irish Times asked respondents who are married, or who were previously married, how many people they had invited to their weddings. The survey also asked whether their guest lists consisted of more family, more friends or an even mix of both.

The survey results are broken into three age groups: 15-34, 35-54 and 55 and over.

The survey shows that the average Irish wedding had 110 attendees, including the bride and groom. Under-35s were more likely to have had larger weddings, averaging 141 people.

The older you are, the less lavish your wedding party probably was. On average under-35s had 51 more wedding guests than those aged 55 or over, who had an average of 90 guests.

Married couples in the 35-54 category had an average of 123 guests.

And for those under-35s, the guests were more likely to be friends than family: 43 per cent of under-35s said they had more friends than family at their wedding whereas their older counterparts were more likely to have had an even spread of both, or more family, at their big day.

Half of 35-54-year-olds said they had “about the same number” of friends and family while just 13 per cent invited more friends than family.

The older generation were the most family-oriented: 45 per cent of those in the 55-plus category said they had invited more family than friends to their wedding, while just 12 per cent had more friends than family.

Working people also tended to have big weddings with an average of 122 people in attendance while “homemakers” reported having 110 attendees on average.

In keeping with the finding that couples in the older generation tended to invite fewer guests retirees and grandparents were the two groups which reported the fewest wedding guests at 85 and 88 attendees respectively.

The findings are based on the responses of 566 married, widowed, divorced or separated people, a subset of the 1,000 individuals aged 15 and over who took part in an Irish Times/Ipsos MRBI poll between February 5th and 19th 2015.