On this Valentine’s Day many lovers will be thinking about spending whether to spend the rest of their lives together and pop the question, but with the average wedding now costing around £14,000, many couples will have to prolong their engagement while they save up for their dream day.

According to research from Abbey National Personal Loans, eight in ten people (79%) think that weddings suffer from the ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ effect and that there is pressure on people to have a lavish affair. That might be all right for those who have the money to lash out on a luxuriant wedding but for most it seems way out of reach.

As a result, many couples are spending years saving up for the big day. A third (33%) of engaged couples save for more than two years for their contribution to their wedding costs and nearly a tenth (9%) save for at least four years.

The research found that more than a third (35%) of couples pay all their wedding costs themselves and more than two thirds (69%) will pay at least half. This could explain why two fifths (38%) of couples are engaged for at least eighteen months before they marry and one in ten (11%) wait for five years or more. Indeed, nearly a third of people (30%) said that if money were not an issue, they would have liked to marry sooner.

If couples save to pay the total average cost of a wedding themselves, they would have to put aside £1,167 every month to marry a year after their engagement.

Most ‘nearly weds’ take a cautious approach to financing their weddings, with three-quarters (76%) mainly using savings. Only 7% pay on plastic and only 5% take out a personal loan.

Reza Attar-Zadeh, Director of Consumer Credit at Abbey National says:

“It is interesting to see that so many couples are prolonging their engagements to save up for their dream wedding, when they could take out a personal loan and get married straightaway.”

“It seems that while many people are prepared to finance a new car or a holiday with a personal loan, couples feel they have to save for a wedding. If people really want to tie the knot, why should they wait when a loan can bring the happy day forward by years?”