Sustainable weddings are growing in momentum, and we’re here for it! This article for a Hampshire wedding venue suggests three top wedding trends for 2024:

• Sustainable weddings
• Shorter engagements
• Individual styling touches

It’s lovely to see how the wedding scene changes every year. Top of our list is always the move towards a more individual wedding, and this piece by The Grange Hampshire tells us couples are moving away from set ‘wedding packages’ at venues (yay!), instead choosing to curate their own individual weddings.

It’s also lovely to hear that sustainability is of growing importance: growing flowers rather than cut; locally sourced and (we hope organically) grown food is a popular choice. We’ve written our own series of advice blogs at English Wedding so please check those out in our sustainable wedding series too!

The third trend mentioned is an interesting one: shorter engagements means a rush to plan weddings. We’d always advise giving yourselves as much time as you can, to plan and save and enjoy wedding planning together!

 

Wedding trend predictions for 2024, by The Grange Hampshire

Couples are tending to have shorter engagements in order to get married faster, according to leading country wedding venue The Grange Hampshire.

Before Covid most people made their vows at The Grange Hampshire’s beautiful, historic properties around 18 months to two years after becoming engaged, but now many take as little as nine months.

And whilst traditionally the perception is that it takes years to plan a wedding, The Grange Hampshire has revealed it has organised some in just three days.

Helping couples curate their weddings, The Grange Hampshire events director Julia Mitchell has noticed a number of new trends. There has been a reduction in the average time it takes between couples getting engaged and then married, and sustainability is now high on the agenda, with couples thinking of clever wedding favours instead of items which usually get left behind.

“People used to have long engagements but are now getting engaged and married quicker, thinking, ‘why wait’. Before Covid people took up much longer between proposal and wedding, but now people are getting married much quicker.”

 

Julia said she has seen a rise in couples wanting to create their own individual wedding day, rather than relying on traditional wedding packages.

Many couples now strive for sustainability on their wedding day, which mirrors The Grange Hampshire’s own drive for sustainability. Fruit, vegetables, and flowers grown on the estate can be put to use. Alternative energy is used and being installed to heat venues, and upcycled antique and contemporary furniture is used in the properties’ guest rooms where the wedding party’s friends and family can stay.

The Grange Hampshire also encourages “alternatives to cut flowers – we like living flowers so people can plant them into their gardens after the wedding and see them bloom each year around their anniversary. But if cut flowers are used, we also compost them on the farm. Waste can also be a big problem at weddings, so we ensure that anything which needs to be disposed of is taken away to a depot who hand sort it and recycle as much as they can; usually around 95%.”

She added: “People are more thoughtful these days about wedding favours, menu cards and plastic bottles etc. They think differently about what favours they might have. One of our couples are keen readers and are giving each guest a charity shop book with hand-written messages inside as a memento of the day.”

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Situated in the rolling Hampshire hills amid 3,500 acres, The Grange Hampshire hosts a range of weddings each year, either within their historic Neo-Classical mansion house that was once inhabited by royalty and hosted Winston Churchill and Eisenhower, at the classic Grade II listed 18th century Abbotstone Farm House with its beautiful 6 acre garden, swimming pool and tennis court that becomes a home-from-home wedding for the weekend, or in a marquee in their secret walled garden overlooking the ornamental lake within the grounds of the picturesque Lake House.