If you have had a wedding recently, you have most likely experienced it in your own meats: marriages are no longer a single day. Or every time they are less. Today is usual that the key moment of ‘yes I want’ is preceded and followed by a series of faustos that include commitment parties, farewells, prebodas and post -bodies, a succession of celebrations that increase the invoice and lead some to talk about ‘Endless Wedding’ either Weddings “Marathon”.
The ‘great day’ is increasingly great and less day.
A fact: 32%. A few months ago the specialized portal weddings.net did a curious exercise. As part of your Sectorial Report of 2025, in which it describes services, prices and trends related to the world of weddings, inquired how they now last on the celebrations. And his conclusion was surprising. Only 32% It lasts one day. The usual thing is that several days last.
To be more precise, the 38% Of the couples celebrate two -day weddings, 28% prolong the event for three days and 2% even spend the four days. It is difficult to assess how that trend has evolved in recent years, but it helps to take a look at the Wedding.net report of 2019. There the platform indicated that it had not yet arrived in Spain “the international trend of weddings that last several days”, and sentenced: “It will take, it requires a cultural change.”
Why are weddings lengthened? Good question. Complicated answer. And it is complicated because it does not enter a single factor at stake, but a sum of them. One (fundamental) is the growing visibility we have of the weddings of other countries through networks. And that includes both celebrations of anonymous and Celebritiesincluded Paris Hilton either Jeff Bezosevents marked by luxury and that continued for several days. Another reason (much simpler) is that weddings change because we do it.
Every time we get married later (If in 1976 the Middle Ages was 25.8 years today exceed 38) and it is not strange that the bride and groom have spent part of their lives outside their native cities, on another tip of Spain or even abroad. That implies that friends include friends who can arrive from hundreds or thousands of kilometers. Extending weddings is a way to enrich your experience and, above all, reinforce contact. A pre -wedding for example serves that guests who don’t know each other can break the ice before the big day.
Two words: ‘Destination Weddings’. The expansion of weddings coincides with another upward phenomenon, ‘Destination Weddings’ (fate weddings), links that are at the same time a tourist getaway. The bride and groom choose to marry the city where they live, in another municipality, community or even abroad, moving the ceremony (and guests) to iconic places such as the Greek islands, the Italian coast, Las Vegas or Ibiza. The objective is to enrich the experience, which is in turn promoting a business with respective growth.
A few months ago Future Market Insights consultant published A study which estimates that the market of ‘fate wedding’ will reach this year globally the 36.8 billion dollars, considerably above the 23,000 million which projected in 2022, but still far from the 68,200 million that provides for them to be reached in just a decade. According to its calculations, the business will evolve with an annual compound growth rate (CAGR) from 6.4% to 2035.
Of prebodas and post -bodies. In that ‘expansion’ of the celebrations there are two fundamental words, increasingly present in the celebrations: the Prebodas and postbods. The big day is still the same, that of ‘Yes I want’, but it is common for the eve of the bride and groom want to organize a first celebration so that guests can know each other and feel more relaxed the next day. Especially the youngest. That leads them to organize (increasingly) prebodas.
“We do it because we feel like gathering our friends, especially those who come from outside, to catch up and thank them for the effort to come,” Comment to Eldiario.es Martín, a 30 -year -old man who will marry in a few months in Mallorca. “I also think it is positive because the wedding day you have to greet a lot of people, and so you take away that part,” Reflect.
He is not the only one who thinks like that. In 2021 Aldara and Pablo, a couple who had married that same summer, related to The country How when planning the celebration they realized something: taking into account the number of guests, they would have three minutes to be with each one. Nothing else. Its solution was to expand the wedding, extending it to 48 hours: the first day they organized a ceremony “in its own way.” The second consisted of a “groove”, in his words, with a party in the pool that followed his time through the City Council, where they gave the formal ‘yes’.
That the party does not stop. Prebodas triumph. And also the post -bodies, celebrations that follow the big day. I know confirmed a few years ago to S fashion A firm that is dedicated precisely to organize links: “A pre -wedding party has been almost mandatory if there are many guests from outside, but what we are noticing is an increase in post -basket celebrations. Brunch To fire the guests, for example, they are increasingly popular. ”
There is nothing written about the post -bodies, but the usual comment From the sector, they consist of a pecking or a family reunion, closer, less formal than the day of the ceremony, and that they do not organize too late.
The other figure: 24,618 euros. The celebrations change … and upload their cost. The last wedding yearbook shows something else: weddings continue to take care in our country. According to your calculationsthe average bill of marrying in Spain has risen from 21,056 euros in 2022 to 23,750 in 2023 and 24,618 in 2024. That is, in a couple of years the budget has shot almost 20%. The data does not include the commitment ring or the honeymoon, but it falls short for some professionals in the sector, who estimate that in Spain a wedding is already easily going to the 35,000 euros. And that, they clarify, for a celebration of around 100 guests.
Marathon weddings. The increase in costs coincides with a change in celebrations that surround the ‘yes I want’, increasingly extensive, broad and that start much earlier. In 2021 The country He spoke directly about ‘Weddings Marathon’ If the commitment parties are taken into account, the bachelor parties, dinners prior to the big day and the Brunchs the next day. Right now only 16% Of the couples they dedicate less than six months to plan their ‘great day’. Half begins to organize it between 12 and 18 months before and the average time is already around the year.
That there are more celebrations and more spaced over time translates into an increase in expenses. Also for guests. “I spent 300 euros on the weekend of the bachelorette party, another 200 in the gift and 100 more per night at the hotel. I stayed three nights because they organized some glasses on before and a meal that lengthened all afternoon the day after. Ah! confesses a young woman After going to a wedding in Galicia.
Images | MITCHELL ORR (UNSPLASH), Vasily Koloda (UNSPLASH) and Mark Zamora (UNSPLASH)
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