I was curious to know how may weddings take place every year and found in UK. Since"Olden times" it has dropped from 50 per thousand single, (unmarried, divorced, widowed), women to about 20. So for your local population you can get an idea of the total wedding market, subtract a percentage who don't have a pro photographer or get married overseas, then divide by the number of wedding photographers in your area (including Gumtree ads plus a percentage of "I've got a mate who does weddings"). The resulting number does probably not make for happy reading. Time to promote "We've Moved in Together But Aren't Getting Married" photoshoots.
I tried doing this research some months ago, but couldn't find any numbers that were particularly useful. Most stats were a few years old, pre recession I think. Good luck, and of course let us know if you find anything out ;-)
Those stats are readily available in Ireland, and broken down into categories of church vs. civil weddings, and age groups etc! The number has grown quite a bit since 2006 & the start of the recession here!
In the UK the number of weddings year on year, has been decreasing since the mid 1970's. The only time their is a 'buck' in this trend is for years when there is a Royal Wedding.
The real question should be "How many wedding photographers are there?" In the UK this number grows at unprecedented levels each year, as 90% of University photography graduates each year, end up working outside the photographic industry and inevitably returning at some point in the future as 'Wedding Photographers' to make a little extra pocket money.
Add to this that each time there is a recession, (and we've had one since 2008 that looks like it might last for 10-15 years at present,) all of those people made redundant that think wedding photography is easy, all become 'Wedding Photographers' too, after going on a day-long course and buying a £300 Canon/Nikon DSLR with the kit lens.
Now if someone has accurate stats and numbers for this question, I'd be very interested as Google says there are over 100,000 returns when I ask it for wedding photographers in my area.
Your post made me think of research I tried to do here in the US. I wanted to find out how many applications for marriage licenses there had been last year in my community. Searching the internet didn't provide results. I'm sure I could go to the courthouse, but it was just idle curiosity.
I was wondering what the wedding photographers/weddings ratio actually was. My wag is about 20/1. I have a friend who was a second generation professional and had been in the business for 30 years. He had a lot of name recognition. There are some other factors involved, but he is now back in school partly because the market was so oversaturated.
