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What the number means
Choice is counted here as licensed venues for every 100,000 people who live in an area. It is the fairest way to compare a crowded city with a stretch of open countryside: a hundred venues is a lot for a market town and very few for a city of a million.
The typical council area in England and Wales has 10 venues for every 100,000 residents. Westminster has 96.5, the most of any area with a sizeable population; Nuneaton and Bedworth has 1.4, the fewest of all 317. The pattern is the one you would guess once you see it: the places people travel to for a wedding — Devon, the Cotswolds, mid Wales, the Lakes — hold far more venues than their populations need, and the big cities hold far fewer.
How busy the venues are
The second number in each result is how many civil weddings the venues in an area held in a year. Across England and Wales the figure is 22.6 weddings per venue in 2023. Well above that, and the popular dates go early; well below, and there is more room to be flexible. One busy register office can lift an area on its own, so treat it as a guide to how competitive the calendar is, not a promise about any one venue.
Every area, side by side
The complete tables, with every council area ranked by residents, by land and by weddings per venue, are on the rankings page. To see the venues themselves, go to all areas or search the map.