Science says this is the best age to get married

When you can afford it (new research has revealed that the average wedding costs a whopping £27,161 on average!) when you’ve been together a few years, when you feel ‘ready’… There are plenty of theories about when the best time to get married is, but science has its own offering.

For years, divorce research led us to believe that marrying later is related to lower odds of divorce. But a study from 2015, which has recently resurfaced has thrown doubt over that conclusion.

Led by the Institute of Family Studies (IFS) at the University of Utah, the research revealed that couples who marry in their late twenties or early thirties face the lowest odds of divorce.

After analysing data from the 2006-10 and 2011-13 National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG), the study, which was lead by Nick Wolfinger, suggested that to boost the chances of a lasting marriage, couples should get hitched between the ages of 28 and 32.

Unsurprisingly, researchers found that the divorce risk is higher when you’re younger (with couples who marry in their teens having the highest chance of divorce), before steadily reducing towards your late 20s and early 30s.

Experts have dubbed this 28-32 period the “Goldilocks zone”, but as soon as you’re past the just-right age region, the divorce risk starts to increase again, with the chance of divorce increasing five per cent for every year after 45 that a marriage begins.

Study authors suggest this may be because those who get married at a young age may not have looked around enough for the right partner, while those who wait longer to get married may have “less of the necessary cognitive and emotional resources to maintain their relationships than those who start around the age of 30.”

Wolfinger, a sociologist, believes that the 28-32 rule exists regardless of where you live and your background.

“Even after controlling for respondents’ sex, race, family structure of origin, age at the time of the survey, education, religious tradition, religious attendance, and sexual history, as well as the size of the metropolitan area that they live in,”he explains.

Despite the research, the age when most couples walk down the aisle falls just outside of this golden period.

According to new research by Hitched.co.uk, 33 is the most common age for brides to say ‘I do’, with the average age for grooms being 34.

Only 11 per cent of brides who got married were aged 18 to 24, according to the survey of 3,000 people.

This jumped to 61 per cent of weddings for people aged 24 to 34, and then fell to 18 per cent for those aged 34 to 44.

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