Charli XCX's Town Hall Marriage Shows Gen Z's 'Quiet Wedding' Trend Is Going Mainstream, According To Experts
Young people are leaning into cheap weddings, and it's not only about the economy.
Kathy Hutchins | Shutterstock Charli XCX has made bone-dry wit and an almost aggressively unbothered stare something of a trademark, and it even carried over to her wedding. Rather than the lavish, star-dudded, diamond-encrusted excess we're used to seeing from even millennial celebrities like her, Charli's town hall wedding was simpler than anything most of us have probably ever attended.
And according to some wedding-industry professionals, it might not just be down to Charli's stripped-down aesthetic. Experts say that the entire culture of weddings is shifting, especially as Gen Z comes of age and gets ready to walk down the aisle.
Charli XCX's town hall wedding is part of a wider Gen Z trend, experts say.
Charli XCX's wedding to The 1975 drummer George Daniel perfectly fit her irreverent, unimpressed persona. The couple opted for a tiny ceremony at the town hall in the London borough of Hackney, where Charli kept her attire just as low-key, opting for a knee-length Vivienne Westwood dress and, of course, her trademark sunglasses.
It was right on-brand for a woman who cheekily calls her aesthetic "city sewer slut" and declared that "if you love it, if you hate it, I don't [expletive] care what you think" in her 2024 hit "360." But according to the wedding planning specialists at online printing service Aura Print, Charli's nuptials are part of a much wider trend.
She may be a millennial herself, but her wedding was in lockstep with what seems to be Gen Z's preferred wedding vibe, which the experts say is "rewriting the modern wedding traditions" amid a push for "more private and intimate celebrations." First there was "quiet quitting," then "quiet luxury," and now that Gen Z is hitting marrying age, it's the "quiet wedding."
Gen Z is increasingly opting for weddings that are not just small but also more intimate.
According to recent surveys and data analysis, search activity for small-wedding details and venues such as the location of the closest town hall office has been surging in the past few years, and 29% of engaged couples say they're planning to opt for a small, more intimate wedding.
"They’re rewriting the modern wedding traditions, pushing for more private and intimate celebrations," Aura's experts explained. Why? Some experts think it's part of the wider trend of Gen Z being more interested in authenticity, or at least the appearance of authenticity, across the board.
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Where millennial web culture was all about curation and polish, Gen Z likes to keep things looser. They basically single-handedly started the trend of not editing TikToks, for example, and this seems to be carrying over to their wedding planning. As Sophia Pav, owner of PAV Weddings, put it to Vogue last year, "It’s almost curated to be so uncurated looking."
In short, the big, fancy wedding with the meticulously crafted aesthetic (remember all those "farmhouse" weddings a few years ago) feels passé and impersonal to many Gen Z'ers, and many are swinging the pendulum in the other direction.
Cost concerns are, of course, a factor in the 'quiet wedding' trend too.
There's far more to this trend than just big, fancy weddings feeling like yet another example of "millennial cringe" to Gen Z. While many in the conservative and economic media have crowed about how Gen Z is more highly paid than previous generations were at their age, those reports fail to account for the way inflation, cost of living and especially housing prices have basically erased those gains.
In short, Gen Z is struggling economically. A lot. And just like with the widespread delays in homeownership and having children we've been seeing among younger generations, the economy is unsurprisingly impacting Gen Z weddings too.
The average cost of a wedding in 2025 has risen to a staggering $33,000, which is pretty hard to square when you're struggling as much as so many Gen Zers tend to be. Compared to the few hundred it costs to just go to city hall and call it a day, it's no wonder the quiet wedding trend has become a force.
Still, the data shows that the majority of Gen Zers are still having a traditional wedding. But with "quiet weddings" a growing trend, we just might see a whole lot more Charli XCX-style nuptials in the coming years—just maybe without the giant sunglasses.
John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.
