Here comes the bride …
…sometime in October, more than likely.
The phrase “June bride” has been around almost from the moment cavemen and women started saying “I do.” There’s been an entire Bette Davis movie built around it (“June Bride,” 1948), a popular song celebrating it (“They say when you marry in June you’re a bride all your life” from the musical “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers”) and, of course, actual factual history to back it up. June has traditionally been the most popular month for weddings in America, right up to and including in 2014, when government vital records show 15 percent of all couples marched down the aisle then.
Well, kiss that goodbye. Wedding mega-web site The Knot has just released the results of its "2015 Real Weddings Study" and it turns out that October is now the most popular month to get married. According to the annual survey of nearly 18,000 real brides and grooms, 17 percent chose October to get hitched, with September the runnerup at 15 percent.
That's a noticeable shift from 2014's Real Wedding Study when June was the No. 1 choice of 15 percent of all couples surveyed (mirroring those government stats) and October was No. 2 at 14 percent. Yet it's all part of an overall trend of Fall becoming the time for weddings, The Knot projects.
“Summer has long been defined as being wedding season,” they write in the study. “However, fall weddings are picking up steam and are well on their way to being the newly crowned king season.”
In 2015, fall (defined as September-November) beat out summer (June-August) as the time to get married, 39 percent to 33 percent (That’s a reverse from 2014, when 39 percent of all couples surveyed chose summer weddings versus 31 percent for fall).
As usual, Atlanta is leading the way. In 2015, a whopping 41 percent of couples here opted for Fall nuptials, according to the study.
That does and doesn't makes sense. We found a bunch of couples who purposely got married on April Fools Day in Gwinnett, so thinking outside the nuptials box is clearly a thing here. Meanwhile, metro Atlanta's average high temperature in the summer months is 87 degrees; throw in the usual humidity of about 110 percent, and the mere thought of donning formalwear and trying to keep a bridal bouquet from wilting can be downright misery-inducing.
On the other hand, Fall is also college football season. And as Southern Weddings magazine proclaims on its web site:
"We believe in picking a wedding date based on the SEC football schedule."
Either a lot of SEC teams have off-days in October or flat-screen TV's showing the games during receptions are now de rigeur here.
Maybe The Knot will ask about that in its 2016 Real Wedding Study.
More: Who's crazy enough to get married on April Fools Day in Gwinnett?
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