Planning
Audio guestbooks and live illustrators: the guest experience arms race, assessed honestly
Two of the most booked additions this year. One of them is worth the money for almost everybody. The other is not.
The MagazineOctober 2026
Style & Trends
The low alcohol wedding stopped being a compromise
Alcohol free and low alcohol celebrations are increasingly normal, helped by the fact that the drinks finally got good.
Latest
Style & Trends
Trousers at the altar stopped being a statement
Tailored trousers appeared across the Spring 2027 bridal collections as a straightforward option rather than a provocation.
Style & Trends
The bridal accessory has grown up: scarves, collars, capelets and gloves
The neck scarf turned up in collection after collection this season, along with pearl collars, fingerless gloves and capelets. The veil now has competition.
Editor’s Pick
Corsetry and volume are back: what the Spring 2027 bridal collections actually showed
After several seasons of restraint, the runways went the other way. Visible boning, enormous skirts, and sheer layers that hide almost nothing.
Money
The £272 guest
Spend per guest rose four per cent this year while total budgets stayed flat. The maths of that is worth understanding before you write your list.
Venues
Barns are on course to take more than a quarter of UK weddings
Projected to reach 28 per cent of bookings by 2027, up from 21 per cent in 2025. The barn has stopped being the alternative choice.
Venues
Venue hire now averages £6,040, and London charges 45 per cent more than the rest of the country
The gap between what a venue costs in London and what it costs elsewhere is now large enough to be worth a train journey.
Money
UK wedding budgets have barely moved in three years, and that is more interesting than it sounds
Bridebook puts the 2026 average at £20,604, from a survey of 7,000 couples. It was £20,822 last year and £20,775 the year before. Flat, in an era when nothing else is.
Editor’s Pick
The law that decides where you can marry is being rewritten, and you have until September to say something
The Government opened a ten week consultation on weddings law in July. If it goes through, the ceremony could happen in a garden, on a beach, or under a tree, and a celebrant could make it legal.
Celebrity Weddings
What Bollywood weddings teach UK couples planning a shaadi
Behind the palaces and the couture, the great Indian celebrity weddings run on principles any British Asian family can use. Seven lessons worth stealing.
Celebrity Weddings
Parineeti and Raghav in Udaipur: the lakeside wedding, refined
A Bollywood star and a politician, a palace on Lake Pichola, and a white and gold palette that photographed like morning light. The 2023 wedding, considered.
Celebrity Weddings
Sonam Kapoor and Anand Ahuja: the Mumbai wedding week that started the modern era
A Sikh ceremony at a family home, a reception where Bollywood danced till dawn, and Everyday Phenomenal as a wedding motto. The 2018 celebration that set the template.
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