Meanwhile, research published in May found that Brits now spend an average of £391 each to attend a wedding – a rise of £88 since 2018. This figure includes an average of £72 spent on hotel accommodation, £68 spent on a wedding outfit and £58 on a hen or stag party.
So, with the housing crisis so extreme it's pricing many young people out of big cities, it's not surprising to hear that 44% of millennial renters have had to turn down wedding invitations for financial reasons.
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And sadly, 62% of the millennial renters who responded to a survey by flat-sharing website SpareRoom said they'd lost friends because of it.
Meanwhile, 31% of millennial renters said they'd fallen into debt because of the cost of attending weddings, and 15% said that spending so much money on weddings had actually forced them to move back home.
Of course, it's likely that millennial renters are especially pinched by wedding costs because they attend so many of them during a relatively condensed period of time.
According to the Office of National Statistics, the average age at which people in the UK are getting married for the first time is between 31 and 33 for opposite sex couples and 35 and 39 for same sex couples. Millennials, generally considered to be between 23 and 38 years old, are likely to be in these couples' core friendship groups.
Matt Hutchinson, communications director of SpareRoom, said in response to the survey results: "To hear that some renters have had to move out of their home and move back in with their parents as a result of spending too much money attending weddings is quite shocking.
"If you decide you can’t afford to attend a friend’s wedding, meet up face to face and have a conversation with them about the reasons why – the likelihood is they’ll understand and you can move forward with your friendship, rather than lose it."
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