Miranda’s discovered our best-kept secret: The rise of the ‘midlife elopement’

Miranda Hart, beloved comedian and actor, has just revealed that she’s had, what she calls, a wedding. At 51, she’s found – and recently married – “her person”. There was no fuss, no crowds of well-wishers – and certainly no Hello! deal to mark the occasion. Miranda has simply joined the growing trend for the quiet midlife wedding.

Its chic end is the boom in “luxury elopements” – there are even companies who will arrange this for you at vast expense, in Zermatt or Zambesi, Big Sur or Barbados. For couples who are sick of family arguments over sugared almonds or can’t face warring parents over the prawns, it’s proving an increasingly desirable option. Why fork out the price of a house deposit so Cousin Pete can get hammered and your half-forgotten university flatmate can flirt with the married best man?

The average price of a UK wedding and honeymoon is now £25,952 – for that, a couple can fly business class to Bermuda, marry on the beach with a waiter as a witness and have plenty left over for an Ikea run on their return.

Of course, it’s understandable that younger first-timers might want to do it the classic way – max out the bank of Mum and Dad, hire a stately home, kettle guests for 12 solid hours of enforced jollity, bounce about to “Hi Ho Silver Lining”, then wake up the next morning with a crippling financial hangover and a £5k dress covered in grass stains. They’ve never been married before, and there’s huge pressure to make it a large public event (“darling, Auntie Sue will WEEP if she’s not invited”) But by midlife, nobody wants the nuptial equivalent of a D-list celebrity product launch.

Full disclosure, I’ve had three weddings. The first was parent-organised, featuring whole tag teams of vague family friends, random great aunts and the full church-meal-party flow chart. The second, we organised ourselves and had a town hall wedding, a buffet and a massive dance-off with piles of friends.

But when I married my third – and yes, doubters, last – husband at 51, the urge to splurge had truly vanished.

It was 2022 and the fear of lockdowns lingered. We had taken a big financial hit in the pandemic, but we wanted to get married (after eight years together) while older relations were still here. So we had a ceremony in the garden and a child-free party for 40 family and friends – which like lunatics, we catered for ourselves (they still talk of the langoustine bisque around here, you know.)

It was immensely civilised, everyone was in bed by midnight – and the clear-up was done by noon the next day, before we set off on our two-day honeymoon at a posh Scottish hotel.

It wasn’t a “luxury elopement” (because we wanted our nearest and dearest there) – but it was small, elegant, and nobody behaved inappropriately with the matron of honour. I didn’t even have one. I walked up the garden with my grown-up son and our two cocker spaniels.

Like Miranda, I know that a midlife wedding can be a beautiful thing – but you don’t have to invite everyone you’ve ever met, or announce it with a Red Arrows fly-past. It can be just the two of you, or a select group; it can be a smart lunch or an evening dinner. If you like, of course, it can be a full-on extravaganza.

But ask yourself – after 50, do you really need 200 filo pastry baskets and a Jive Bunny remix? Or do you simply want to get happily hitched to your later-life love and enjoy a decent night’s sleep? The answer is, what we call, obvious.