Londoners' weddings now cost the same as two houses in the North

And the third biggest cost is the dress

(Getty Images/iStockphoto (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

It’s meant to be the happiest day of your life, but your wedding day could also be the most expensive 24 hours you’ll ever have.

The average cost of a wedding is now £27,000, but in London that rises to a whopping £38,666.

For that amount of money, you could buy a whole house in some parts of Northern England.

Two houses in Burnley, Lancashire, are currently on sale for a combined price of £37,950 (Rightmove)

But if you’re looking to keep the costs down, best head over to Wales which is the cheapest place in the UK to get hitched, at a mere £23,000 on average.

The data collected by free online wedding platform Bridebook, who studied 20,000 brides and grooms who tied the knot last year, shows how ridiculously expensive weddings are becoming.

Nowadays it’s seemingly normal to blow the budget on one day - whether that’s down to social media pushing couples into lavish parties or society being pickier about food, brides- and grooms-to-be are going all out on their big day.

Venue hire and food and drink are the two biggest costs, making up about a third of the total spend. In third place, however, is usually the bride’s dress, which is one hell of an investment for something you’ll probably only wear once.

On average, a bride-to-be spends £1,268 on her gown, but it’s in Scotland that they spend the most £1,645.

The fourth biggest spend is on photography and of course, videography too - hiring someone to film your wedding in London will set you back an average of £1,475, over double the cost in Wales, which is just £695.

Perhaps fortunately for Londoners, the capital is one of the cheapest places to hire a marquee at only £3,600, presumably because no one has any space to put one.

Instead, they're hiring venues, and London is unsurprisingly the most expensive place to do so, at £7,586 - the UK average is still a pricey £5,727 though. For a venue. For a single day.

Oh, and British couples then spend a further £821 decorating their venue.

29% of couples revealed they have no budget when it comes to their big day, and those in the south of England are most likely to spend the big bucks - four percent of weddings in the South East cost over £100,000, followed by South West England with two per cent.

So who’s paying for these lavish ceremonies and parties? Over a third of Scots, Northern Irish and Londoners stick to tradition with the bride’s parents paying for the wedding. In Wales and the South East, however, couple were most likely to pay themselves.

Overall, only 22 per cent of couples tying the knot pay for everything, but 62 per cent pay at least half of their wedding costs.

It’s pricey, marrying the love of your life.

Oh, and then there’s the £3,704 honeymoon to add on, of course.