As a journalist and wedding planner, I have a love-hate relationship with The Knot’s annual Real Weddings Study.
I love it because it’s one of the only large studies of my multi-billion dollar industry. This year’s study, which published today because of course it did, surveyed 11,646 U.S. couples married between January 1 and December 31, 2022. That’s a huge number of people and, I think, one of the best ways The Knot can use its near-monopoly for good.
I hate it for nearly the same reason: The Knot is, obviously, not exactly impartial on the results of the survey and even a quick read of their article summarizing the results gives you a strong sense of what they’d really like you to buy from The Knot. I raged about this in 2020 and again in 2021 and then I think I just didn’t even expend the energy last year because I was too busy creating COVID safety templates for weddings.
But it’s 2023 and today’s results are too interesting to pass up. Here’s my take as a professional wedding planner who also happens to have a journalism degree:
We got an average number of hours per week people spend on wedding planning.
Survey says: Six hours a week, which tracks with the (very minimal) studies available on this topic. One of the only ones I’ve ever been able to find is this less-than-ideal piece in Forbes from 2017 where 19 percent of the 1,055 “working women” respondents reported spending 10 hours a week planning.
Unfortunately, The Knot doesn’t detail how those hours are spent, instead opting to hype wedding apps: “Nearly two-thirds download wedding apps to be able to plan on the go and multitask (an evening of Netflix and wedding planning is a likely combo!”).
Based on my seven years as a professional wedding planner, it’s likely those six hours a week are a combo of researching, interviewing, and booking vendors and, later on, the creation and distribution of a wedding day timeline. Six hours a week tracks with my own internal number; I spend an average of 40 hours on a wedding including the wedding day itself.
The most important part of this weekly number? It helps quantify the invisible labor of wedding planning. As I often tell my clients, “If this feels like an unpaid part-time job, that’s because it is.”
We’re (finally) talking about Gen Z!
There’s a big debate in my industry on what marriage (and thus, weddings) will mean to Gen Z. Today’s study attempted to answer that question since, as The Knot puts it, “the oldest Gen Z turned 25 — now entering the core marrying ages.”
Regrettable language aside (what exactly is a “core marrying age”?), The Knot isn’t wrong that Gen Z is getting older. But how they’ll host weddings that align with their values? That remains as unclear as ever.
Today’s results seem to imply Gen Z folks talk slightly more about money before they get hitched (90 percent vs. 86 percent of surveyed Millennials) and that they date slightly longer (68 percent to 60 percent though, notably, The Knot doesn’t explain if perhaps that’s just because Gen Z folks are so much younger than most Millennials and thus dated longer because odds are higher than they were teenagers when they met).
Most surprising to this middle-of-the-road Millennial was the stat that 15 percent of surveyed Gen Z couples met online compared to 29 percent of Millennials.
How does Gen Z host a wedding? The Knot summarizes the results from its 2022 Real Wedding Study. Source: The Knot
Where are the polyamorous stats?
One area that I hope to see Real Weddings explore in future years is how polyamorous folks are using weddings to honor their relationships.
This study continues to address weddings that only involve couples, which misses relationships where one or both partners have romantic relationships outside their relationship and/or relationships that involve more than two people and are using a wedding to recognize that commitment.
While in the U.S. such unions wouldn’t be legally recognized by state or federal governments, this wedding planner is here to tell you that they do exist and aren’t going anywhere. It would be great to see one of the biggest surveys of the wedding industry reflect that demographic.
Thank goodness for four years of cost per guest data.
One of the most useful pieces of information that come out of Real Weddings is an average cost per guest. I’ve found this so useful in my work with clients that I’ve regularly sent them to the 2019 press release reporting on 2018 data to get a breakdown on what each person they invite will likely cost. It’s an easy way to do some back-of-the-napkin math when budgeting.
This year’s number: $256 per guest. That’s $10 lower than last year’s results, $12 more than 2020’s results, and $42 more than 2019’s results.
What isn’t included is how we get to that number (i.e. what are people buying their guests that gets us to $256 per guest?). The 2018 Real Weddings Study would tell you it’s mainly food ($70 per guest before any alcohol). The 2019 Study blames it on the “guest experience” (though, notably, didn’t include a per guest number in that year’s public-facing results). The 2020 Study pointed to COVID (PPE adds up) while 2021 was back to calling out pricey personalized favors.
And this year’s explanation for why the cost per guest is what it is? Inflation. The word is used five times in the article summarizing the results though, again, which portions of planning are most impacted by inflation didn’t make the final cut.
Trends over time. The Knot summarizes the results from its 2022 Real Wedding Study with a focus on changes between 2019 and 2022. Source: The Knot
And the big one: What’s the average cost of a wedding in the U.S.?
Survey says: $30,000. That’s back-in-line with what was reported in 2019 ($28K) and 2021 ($28K) with a slight decrease in 2020 (a still dizzying $19K).
Where is that money going? The main report doesn’t say though this piece offers a breakdown of average cost per vendor. Ironically, that data doesn’t offer averages per state despite offering per state averages for the overall cost of the wedding.
That’s ironic because the cost of a wedding vendor in Kansas, where a total wedding costs an average of $16,000, is most likely going to be similarly low as compared to a wedding vendor in New Jersey, where a total wedding costs an average of $51,000. Vendors got to eat, too.
Notably, Real Weddings reports that couples hired an average of 14 vendors but amid the money-saving tips listed at the bottom of the average cost per wedding article, they skip one of the two most effective ways to reduce overall cost: Hire fewer vendors.
In fact, The Knot, “one of the largest vendor marketplaces”, recommends the opposite: “Hire a star vendor team (and a planner!).”
Obviously, I like when you hire a planner because it’s how I make a living. I also think the expectation that everybody can afford to hire 14 vendors for a wedding leads to one of two situations: 1) people who are strapped for cash and/or take on debt to afford their own wedding or 2) a group of vendors who are underpaid for their labor.
The best middle option that I’ve found? Get right with the intention of your wedding. I’ve long called this as a “wedding’s mission statement” and provided a free exercise to help people develop theirs. It seems The Knot is even getting into this idea; they published a story in December 2022 about wedding mission statements.
However you get there, a mission statement will help you figure out which vendors you need to support that mission. It may very well be 14 but sometimes, it’s not and at least having this conversation allows you to have a clearer sense of the money you’re spending and the ability to pay people a living wage.
How much is this whole thing going to cost? The Knot summarizes the results from its 2022 Real Wedding Study to give an average cost per U.S. wedding. Source: The Knot
So, what have we learned?
Love it or hate it, the Real Weddings Study is the best we have until the world decides weddings are worth independent surveys. And it can, with context, provide a useful lens into one of the most important but most dismissed elements of wedding planning: How much is this whole thing going to cost?
Just remember where we’re getting these numbers (a place that marks its millions selling wedding-related goods to couples and vendors) and that we’re not seeing the raw data.
Taken with that pinch of salt, the result is some of the only data we have as we navigate the wedding industry and for that, I’m grateful.