Marriage Statistics (2026)

Marriage in America is changing in ways the numbers make impossible to ignore. Americans are marrying later, spending more on weddings, and forming households that look very different than they did fifty years ago — yet the desire to commit has proven remarkably durable. After the pandemic sent marriages to a historic low in 2020, the country rebounded to roughly two million marriages a year, and the share of married-couple households, while smaller than it once was, remains one of the most common ways Americans live. This guide pulls together the most current, fully sourced statistics on marriage in the United States — from federal vital records to Census surveys, Pew analyses, and the latest wedding-industry data — so you can see where marriage stands in 2026 and where it is heading.

2,041,926Marriages in the U.S. (2023, CDC provisional)

6.1Marriages per 1,000 people (2023)

30.8Median age at first marriage, men (2025)

$34,200Average U.S. wedding cost (2025)

Key takeaways

Marriages have rebounded. The U.S. recorded about 2,041,926 marriages in 2023, holding near the pre-pandemic norm after the steep 2020 drop to under 1.7 million.
Americans marry later than ever. The median age at first marriage reached 30.8 for men and 28.4 for women in 2025 — up from 23.5 and 21.1 in 1975.
The married-couple household is no longer the default. Just 47% of U.S. households were married couples in 2025, down from 66% in 1975.
Marriage is holding steady — and divorce is falling. Pew found 51% of adults were married in 2023, while the share of married adults who divorced hit a record-low 1.4%.
Who Americans marry is broadening. About one in six newlyweds married across racial or ethnic lines, and married same-sex couple households reached roughly 836,000 in 2024.
Weddings keep getting pricier. The average U.S. wedding cost $34,200 for couples married in 2025, though spending swings widely with guest count and budget.

How many Americans marry each year

The clearest measure of marriage comes from federal vital records. According to the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics, there were 2,041,926 marriages in the United States in 2023 (provisional data), translating to a marriage rate of 6.1 per 1,000 total population. That is a near-perfect plateau with 2022, when the country recorded 2,065,905 marriages at a rate of 6.2 per 1,000 — the level the CDC described as a return to pre-pandemic norms.

Two million marriages a year is a large number, but it sits inside a long, gradual decline in how often Americans marry relative to the population. In 2000, the marriage rate stood at 8.2 per 1,000; by 2023 it had fallen to 6.1. The drop reflects later marriage, more cohabitation, and a larger share of adults living single — not a collapse in the institution itself.

The pandemic dip and the rebound

2020 was an anomaly in the marriage record. Lockdowns, postponed ceremonies, and closed county clerks' offices pushed the number of marriages to 1,676,911 — a rate of just 5.1 per 1,000, the lowest in modern record-keeping. The bounce-back was equally dramatic: marriages surged back above two million in 2022 as deferred weddings finally happened. The table below shows the arc.

Year	Number of marriages	Marriage rate (per 1,000 people)
2000	2,315,000	8.2
2020 (pandemic low)	1,676,911	5.1
2022	2,065,905	6.2
2023 (provisional)	2,041,926	6.1

Source: CDC/NCHS, National Marriage and Divorce Rate Trends, 2000–2023.

A more precise measure: the refined marriage rate

The crude rate (marriages per 1,000 of everyone, including children and the already-married) can be misleading. Demographers prefer the "refined" rate — marriages per 1,000 unmarried women. By that measure, the National Center for Family & Marriage Research found the rate held essentially flat at about 31.5 marriages per 1,000 unmarried women in 2023. First-marriage rates were close between the sexes — 26.9 per 1,000 never-married men and 27.1 per 1,000 never-married women in 2023.

Americans are marrying later

Perhaps the single most consequential trend is the steady rise in the age of first marriage. The Census Bureau's 2025 estimates put the median age at first marriage at 30.8 years for men and 28.4 years for women. Fifty years earlier, in 1975, those figures were 23.5 and 21.1. In other words, the typical American now marries about seven years later than their grandparents did — a shift driven by longer education, career-building, and the normalization of living together first.

Median age at first marriage	Men	Women
1975	23.5	21.1
2025	30.8	28.4

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Historical Marital Status Tables (CPS ASEC).

The decline of the married-couple household

As marriage shifts later, the household mix has changed sharply. In 1975, married couples made up 66% of all U.S. households; by 2025 that share had fallen to 47%. Married couples raising their own children under 18 dropped even faster — from 54% of households in 1975 to just 37% in 2025. Meanwhile, one-person households climbed to 39.7 million, or 29% of all households, up from 20% in 1975. The married-with-kids household that once defined "average" America is now a minority arrangement.

How many adults are married right now

Counting households is one lens; counting people is another. Pew Research Center's analysis of Census data found that the share of adults who are married actually ticked up slightly, from 50% in 2019 to 51% in 2023. Over the same period, the share of adults who were "unpartnered" — neither married nor living with a partner — edged down from 44% to 42%. After decades of decline, marriage has stopped retreating and may be stabilizing.

Cohabitation: the new road to marriage

Living together before — or instead of — marriage is now mainstream. Pew reports the share of adults cohabiting with an unmarried partner rose from 6% in 2019 to 7% in 2023. Among younger adults the pattern is even more pronounced: a majority of adults ages 18 to 44 have lived with an unmarried partner at some point, a higher share than have ever been married. For most couples today, cohabitation is not a rejection of marriage but a stage on the way to it.

Divorce: the other side of the ledger

Marriage statistics are incomplete without divorce. In 2023 the CDC counted 672,502 divorces across 45 reporting states and D.C., a rate of 2.4 per 1,000 population. Encouragingly, the long-running myth that "half of all marriages end in divorce" is increasingly out of date: divorce rates have fallen for years, and Pew found that in 2023 a record-low 1.4% of married adults got divorced. Couples who marry later and with more education tend to form more durable marriages.

A note of care: divorce and relationship distress are difficult, and the numbers here represent real people and families. If you or someone you love is in crisis, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline is available 24/7 by calling or texting 988. Struggling in a marriage is common and support — from counselors, mediators, and community resources — is widely available.

Who Americans marry: interracial and interethnic marriage

The pool of who marries whom has widened dramatically. Pew's landmark analysis found that about one in six (17%) of newlyweds married someone of a different race or ethnicity — more than five times the 3% recorded in 1967, the year the Supreme Court struck down bans on interracial marriage in Loving v. Virginia. Attitudes shifted alongside behavior: the share of adults who say the rising number of interracial marriages is good for society climbed to 39%, up from 24% in 2010.

Same-sex marriage a decade after Obergefell

Ten years after the Supreme Court's Obergefell v. Hodges decision legalized same-sex marriage nationwide, the data shows a settled and growing institution. The Census Bureau counted roughly 836,000 married same-sex couple households in 2024 — about 450,000 female couples and 386,000 male couples — up from an estimated 392,000 married same-sex households in 2005. Public support remains broad: Gallup's 2025 polling found 68% of Americans support legal recognition of same-sex marriage, though the partisan gap has widened to a record.

Democrats88%

Independents76%

All U.S. adults68%

Republicans41%

Support for same-sex marriage by group, 2025. Source: Gallup.

The economics of marriage

Money and marriage are deeply intertwined. Pew's research shows that dual-earner marriages — now the norm — reach far higher household incomes than single-earner ones, and that husbands and wives earn roughly equal pay in a growing share of marriages. Marriage has also become more strongly linked to education: college graduates are markedly more likely to be married than adults without a degree, a divergence that researchers tie to widening economic inequality. The paradox is that while Americans rank financial stability low among their reasons to marry, financial insecurity is one of the biggest practical barriers to marrying at all.

The cost of getting married

Weddings remain a significant financial event. The Knot's most recent Real Weddings Study, covering couples married in 2025, put the average wedding cost at $34,200, with an average of 117 guests and a cost of about $292 per guest. But the "average" hides enormous variation — spending tracks closely with guest count, as the table shows.

Guest count	Average wedding spend
1–50 guests	$17,100
51–100 guests	$27,200
Over 100 guests	$43,300

Source: The Knot Real Weddings Study (couples married 2025).

Where Americans marry most

Marriage is far from uniform across the map. The National Center for Family & Marriage Research found that Utah posted the highest refined marriage rate in the country for a fourth straight year, at about 49 women marrying per 1,000 unmarried women, while the lowest-marrying states clustered around 28 or fewer. Cultural and religious norms, median age, and local economies all shape how common — and how early — marriage is from one state to the next.

What the numbers mean for couples

Step back from the spreadsheets and a consistent picture emerges. Americans still want to marry; they simply do it later, after more preparation, and increasingly as equal economic partners. Marriages formed this way tend to last — which is exactly why the divorce rate keeps falling even as weddings get more expensive. The institution is not disappearing; it is maturing.

What the data can't capture is the day-to-day work that keeps a marriage healthy: the way couples handle conflict. Every lasting marriage runs into disagreement — over money, family, time, and a hundred small things. The difference between marriages that thrive and those that fray is rarely the absence of conflict; it's the skill of working through it. That is the gap WeUnite is built to help close. WeUnite offers compassionate, AI-guided conflict resolution that helps couples slow down, hear each other, and find a path forward — with an optional Christian Faith Mode for couples who want their faith woven into the process. It is not a replacement for a licensed counselor or, where needed, professional crisis support, but a practical, private tool for the ordinary disagreements that every marriage in these statistics has to navigate.

A note on methodology

Figures here are drawn from primary sources: the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics for marriage and divorce counts and rates; the U.S. Census Bureau's Current Population Survey and American Community Survey for age at marriage, household composition, and same-sex couples; Pew Research Center's analyses of Census data for partnership status and intermarriage; Gallup for public opinion; the National Center for Family & Marriage Research for refined and geographic rates; and The Knot's Real Weddings Study for wedding costs. CDC marriage and divorce figures for 2023 are provisional, and divorce totals exclude a handful of states that do not report to the national system. Every statistic above links to its original source.