Wedding Industry

Secondary, Tertiary, and Specialized Markets

The secondary wedding market includes travel agencies that organize honeymoon travels, department-store wedding services with wedding gift registries, and bridal magazines. This type of magazine appeared as early as 1934 (So You're Going to Be Married) and is now prosperous, with many local and national titles (Modern Bride, Elegant Bride, The Knot, and so on). Wedding advice is also given by numerous books and Websites. The tertiary market includes services and products that use wedding imagery. One may cite as example bride dolls, movies focusing on marriage, and reality TV shows that have proliferated in recent years (A Wedding Story; Rich Bride, Poor Bride; The Bachelorette, etc.).

The wedding industry is highly specialized, with sectors like celebrity weddings, intermarriages, and vow renewal ceremonies. In the United States and some other Western countries such as the United Kingdom, same-sex weddings comprise a growing market that is exceptionally profitable. Typical consumers are high-income earners and are usually older than heterosexual brides and grooms.

Growing divorce rates do not jeopardize the wedding industry; a new development is the creation of “divorce ceremonies,” which often include returning the wedding rings. Moreover, second weddings are a lucrative sector since “encore brides” or remarrying divorcées may be likely to overspend.

Peak months for the wedding industry are May and June. Reliable statistics for the wedding industry are difficult to find and are often questionable, since they are produced by the industry itself. There are about 2.5 million weddings every year in the United States, and the average wedding costs approximately $27,800. The primary American wedding market earned estimated revenues of $40 billion, including $14 billion for jewelry items.

...