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LoveHowTo Decodes The New York Times “Weddings and Celebrations”
The New York Times’ Sunday Style section contains read-‘em-and-weep announcements of marriages among the elite: Ivy League graduates, high achievers and their children, beautiful people and the occasional head-scratcher. (A favorite game is figuring out how certain no-names made it in.)
A close analysis of weddings announced in The New York Times between Jan. 6 and May 25, 2008 shines light on who these people are and how they met:
A total of 348 weddings were announced. The average age of the bride was 32.3, average age of the groom was 34.5. This compares to U.S averages of 25 for women, 27 for men, so it's obvious that these couples marry after they have accomplished seven years more in their careers than the average couple.
The youngest New York Times bride was 21; she married a 38-year-old. The youngest grooms (there were two of them) were 23; one married another 23-year-old, one went older and married a 26-year-old.
The oldest bride was 66; she married a 62-year-old. The oldest groom was 75 and he also married a 62-year-old.
Fifty may be the new 30, but you’d never know it from The New York Times’ wedding pages. Only 14 brides, or 4% of all women profiled, were 50 or older.
A look at age differences reveals that the tradition of older men-younger women still prevails. Only 13% of marriages were between a bride and groom of the same age, and in only 22% was the wife older than her husband. Here’s a breakdown of these:
| Bride Older by | Percentage |
| 1 year | 52.7% |
| 2 years | 18.9% |
| 3 years | 2.7% |
| 4 years | 12.2% |
| 5 years | 2.7% |
| 6 years | 6.7% |
| 7 years | 4.0% |
In weddings where the bride was older, it was by an average of 2 years. No bride was more than seven years older than her groom.
By comparison, 65% of grooms were older than their brides, by up to 26 years (in that case, she was 44, he 70).
| Groom Older by | Percentage |
| 1 year | 28.1% |
| 2 years | 17.7% |
| 3 years | 10.5% |
| 4 years | 11.0% |
| 5 years | 4.5% |
| 6 years | 5.5% |
| 7 years | 5.0% |
| 8 years | 3.2% |
| 9 years | 3.6% |
| 10 years | 2.3% |
| 11+ years | 8.6% |
The average age difference was four years, or double the difference of those marriages where the bride was older than the groom. Of those whose age difference was more than 10 years, the average was 15 years.
During this period, the men were a total of 783 years older than the women they were marrying.
So where do they meet?
A total of 63% of announcements didn’t specify a way of meeting. In some cases there were hints, typically that they met through business, but unless the announcement clearly spelled it out, the couple was omitted from the following statistics.
Of those announcements giving a method of meeting:
- 38% met in college or high school.
- 24% met through a personal introduction, typically mutual friends, although there was one helpful grandmother credited.
- 13% met through work.
- 6% met through online dating.
Of the announcements identifying online dating as the method of meeting, only two named names: one was Craigslist, the other Match.com. One couple that met online also utilized coaching from Rachel Greenwald, author of Find a Husband After 35: Using What I Learned at Harvard Business School.
Nineteen percent met in "other" ways: on public transportation, in a supermarket, through church, crashing her birthday party on a forwarded Evite, on the same touch football team, in Central Park, at the Barney’s New York Warehouse Sale, at Elaine's, on Fire Island, at the Sundance Festival, at a bar watching college football, performing together, in a hospital visiting their respective parents. Love is all around. Many couples reconnected after meeting briefly or knowing each other years earlier.
A couple’s ages had an enormous bearing on the way they met. Couples that met in school were marrying a full decade earlier than those who met through friends: 28 and 38, respectively. (Of course, many of those marrying later were marrying for the second time.) Those who met through work were even older, averaging 40. Brides and grooms who met online had an average age of 44. And the couples who met “other” ways were an average of 36 years old.
Who is the typical profiled couple? It’s New Yorkers in their 30s who met their spouses-to-be at Harvard or in medical school, whose parents have prestigious careers and whose weddings are held at a major house of worship or “event spaces,” with a female officiating. For the rest of us there’s always TheKnot.com.
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