To ask how many of your wedding guests have died?

[NameChangeMay2026]

It's our anniversary this week, although we are getting divorced.

How many of your guests did you lose in the twenty years after your wedding? I feel like our losses are high. About 85 guests and 15 are gone. Is this normal? Or does it seem high to you too?

Married 27 years, out of 60 guests, 10 have died. One died very suddenly just a few months after the wedding aged 44, our wedding was the last time we were all together.

Oh no! That is hard. 😢💐

You know what else is really fucking sad? On the morning of our wedding, my dad went out and bought a huge bunch of newspapers and magazines from that day. He wrapped it up in brown paper and string, and wrote on it "Open on [wedding date] 2031" and handed it to us during his speech. 2031 would have been our silver wedding anniversary.

I never even saw him leave the house. Didn't know he'd done it.

I still have the package.

Married 20 years. We had a small wedding (33 guests) and of them 6 have passed away. 4 were older family members (parents & uncle) , but 2 were late 40s / early 50s. Seems like a bad ratio.

180 guests, 6 have gone. Married in 2011.

Eight out of thirty here but we are married 35 years this year and they were all our parents/our parents’ generation.

Same ratio as me, 18 percent. The average annual death rate (0.95%) x 20 years is 19%. But I agree, mine seems like a bad ratio to me, even though it's average. Like you, mine includes both parents and some younger people, so maybe that makes it seems worse.

Not bad!

15 years ago. We were both in our 30's. All our grandparents were already dead.

About 100 guests.

0 death since.

I didn't wear a veil.

It has never crossed my mind to track this 😂

Well if nobody's died, it wouldn't cross your mind to track it, would it! But when you lose so many, you wonder how normal it is.

I see that a small handful of PP have lost their guests at the average annual death rate, like me, and many are lower than the average rate, which might be explained if they got married earlier in their lives than I did. I was 31 and my husband was 37, although the losses have been 75% on my side. No PP have had rates higher than the average, so far.

I’ve only been married 4 years and I had around 50 guests. One is already dead.

We have been married 42 years. We had a small wedding with 20 guests. I’ve just counted on my fingers and 10 of them are now dead.

Oh, that's sad. Half. 😢💐

45 in attendance. 4 dead in the 15 years since then, including my wife, my son, my sister and her husband.

Jesus! That's terrible. Were they all in an accident?

My mother in law and the vicar. Both reached a decent age.
We were 8 people for lunch.
Marriged 30 years.

It's weird to think that technically, I've committed adultery. He left me, and we've been separated for 9.5 years now. (Due to various illnesses we haven't officially divorced yet, but that's next on the agenda.) After he'd been out of the house for 6 years, I started dating. So technically, I'm an adulteress, although I'm not sure it really counts!

Blimey, it's twenty years tomorrow, and with all the death, divorce, and adultery, I should spend the day swathed in black!

27 years
about 40 odd guests
6 died
bit of a sober thought

This is me about halfway through my marriage! 🤣

We got married 22 years ago and had 120 guests. Just counted and I think it's 21 guests (plus a few we've lost touch with so might not know about). They were all fairly old (except one who was 61 when she died) so that doesn't seem too bad to me.

That's a rate of half the average annual death rate, though. Hopefully that gives you some comfort.

(The annual average death rate in the UK is 0.95%. You've been married 27 years. 0.95 x 27 is 25.65 percent. You lost 12.5% So if you'd lost guests at the average rate, you'd have lost ten guests.)

Obviously, it's awful to lose even one. I'm just saying it could have been worse!

Do you still have your parents? Mine are both gone, plus three of the people who died were barely out of their thirties. (Suicide, deep-vein thrombosis, and heart attack in person who was a v overweight man.) Maybe that makes it seem worse.

Yes, I still have both my parents (in their 80s now) although my husband's dad died 2 years ago at 84yo.

11 years ago I got married, one of the best men died in an accident two months after the wedding which was awful and my father in law died 2 years ago, think thats it. More couples have split up though can think of at least 4

10 years ago this month. 8 out of around 100 are dead now. Although to turn it around, more than 8 children have since been born who would have been invited had they been alive at the time