It's no revelation to suggest weddings are changing with the times – just look at the way Meghan Markle and Prince Harry modernised this year's Royal Wedding, infusing it with African-American cultural traditions.
The vast majority of us don't have a Royal-sized budget, but as the average cost of a wedding continues to rise, couples are understandably prioritising which traditions they want to keep, and which they're happy to leave in the past.
According to a new study by jewellers F. Hinds, just 31% of people believe that wedding traditions are still important.
The traditions deemed least important by the survey's respondents were wedding favours (considered important by 9% of people), the bride's family paying the bill (10%), and the groom carrying the bride over the threshold (16%).
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Only 19% of respondents said they felt hen and stag dos are important – not too surprising, perhaps, given how expensive these events have become to attend.
However, the UK isn't yet in the throes of a full-on wedding revolution. The study found that 59% of people still believe it's important for a bride to be walked down the aisle by her father, and 46% said that having a best man and bridesmaids remains important.
Just 37% of people felt, though, that it's important for a bride to take her husband's surname after they are married.
Meanwhile, the notion that only men give wedding speeches seems to be becoming a thing of the past. While just 10% of brides over 45 said they'd given a speech at their wedding, this number doubled to 20% among brides aged 18-44.
Perhaps the main takeaway from the study is that couples planning weddings today feel as though they have more freedom than ever before, and aren't bound by tradition for the sake of it. Apparently one survey respondent even wrote, "We had a dog as a best man," which doesn't sound as barking mad (sorry!) as it might have done a generation ago.
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