Tall groom, small bride: why is height still important to relationships?

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Men and women of marriageable age: do you feel the groom should always be taller than the bride?

A new British study suggests - uncontroversially - that height remains an influence on hook-ups, as a survey of 19,000 couples revealed the male to be taller than the female in a disproportionate number of cases.

Matched randomly, the woman would be taller than the man in 6.5 per cent of cases. In the actual results, women were taller in just 4.1 per cent of relationships surveyed.

In Jezebel, Tracy Moore writes: "Individually, this can be chalked up to taste, but on the whole, it can be chalked up to cultural constructs. Why does having a dude be six inches taller feel so romantically right? Why are we still hung up on six inches of height difference?"

This preference for a tall-gentleman, short-lady match can be tough for those women who hit closer to the 6 ft mark, as Moore does herself.

And it still obviously causes a problem for short celebrities - as Mr Tom Cruise's innovative footwear demonstrates...