27 March 2023 - 14:14Wedding cakes are displayed during the Central European Wedding Show in Budapest, Hungary, on March 11, 2023. Picture: REUTERS/BERNADETT SZABO— Soaring inflation is taking the steam out of Hungary’s wedding market, supercharged in recent years by Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s lavish family support measures, with the number of weddings plunging to a nine-year-low at the start of 2023.
The impact was so strong that sociologists say Hungary was the only country in the world where the number of weddings did not fall during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. Livia Murinko, a senior research fellow at the Hungarian Demographic Research Institute, says high inflation has contributed to a fall in the number of weddings after the boom years fuelled largely by all the related government handouts.
Others are scaling back their wedding plans or even scrapping receptions altogether. Stunned by the costs, many couples do not even respond to emailed quotes, service providers say.