Most choice
Venues for every 100,000 residents
The clearest measure of how much choice an area actually gives you: how many licensed venues it holds against how many people live there.
| Council area | Venues | Per 100,000 |
|---|---|---|
| City of London | 34 | 217.5 |
| Isles of Scilly | 4 | 174 |
| Westminster | 205 | 96.5 |
| South Hams | 54 | 58 |
| West Devon | 33 | 56 |
| Powys | 70 | 51.9 |
| North Devon | 49 | 48.4 |
| Cotswold | 44 | 48.1 |
| Torridge | 30 | 42.6 |
| Westmorland and Furness | 98 | 42.4 |
| Derbyshire Dales | 30 | 41.7 |
| Mid Devon | 34 | 39.7 |
| Ribble Valley | 26 | 38.8 |
| Denbighshire | 38 | 38.7 |
| Pembrokeshire | 46 | 36.6 |
| Monmouthshire | 34 | 35.7 |
| Vale of Glamorgan | 48 | 35.5 |
| Gwynedd | 41 | 34.1 |
| Dorset | 127 | 32.5 |
| North Yorkshire | 199 | 31.1 |
| Cornwall | 177 | 30.3 |
| Isle of Anglesey | 20 | 29.2 |
| Isle of Wight | 41 | 29.1 |
| Ceredigion | 21 | 28.9 |
| Conwy | 33 | 28.8 |
⚠️ The top two are real but odd. The City of London has 34 licensed venues and about 15,600 residents, and the Isles of Scilly has four venues and about 2,300 people — places that host far more people than live in them will always lead a per-head ranking. Below them the pattern is the one you would guess: rural Devon, mid Wales, the Cotswolds and the Lakes, which are where people travel to marry.
Least choice
Where the fewest venues serve the most people
| Council area | Venues | Per 100,000 |
|---|---|---|
| Nuneaton and Bedworth | 2 | 1.4 |
| Ashfield | 2 | 1.5 |
| Cannock Chase | 2 | 1.9 |
| Broxbourne | 2 | 1.9 |
| Bexley | 5 | 1.9 |
| Barnet | 8 | 2 |
| Barking and Dagenham | 5 | 2.1 |
| Havering | 6 | 2.1 |
| Sutton | 5 | 2.3 |
| Dudley | 8 | 2.4 |
| Birmingham | 28 | 2.4 |
| Tamworth | 2 | 2.5 |
| Brent | 9 | 2.6 |
| Watford | 3 | 2.8 |
| Redbridge | 9 | 2.8 |
Most concentrated
Venues packed into the smallest space
The same list measured against land rather than people — which is a different question, and gives a completely different answer.
| Council area | Venues | Per 100 km² |
|---|---|---|
| City of London | 34 | 1176.5 |
| Westminster | 205 | 954.3 |
| Kensington and Chelsea | 34 | 280.4 |
| Camden | 52 | 238.8 |
| Islington | 22 | 148.1 |
| Hackney | 24 | 126 |
| Tower Hamlets | 24 | 121.4 |
| Southwark | 33 | 114.3 |
| Hammersmith and Fulham | 16 | 97.6 |
| Lambeth | 23 | 85.8 |
| Wandsworth | 25 | 73 |
| Manchester | 82 | 70.9 |
| Blackpool | 24 | 68.8 |
| Newham | 24 | 66.3 |
| Portsmouth | 26 | 64.4 |
| Cambridge | 25 | 61.4 |
| Greenwich | 29 | 61.3 |
| Bristol, City of | 57 | 52 |
| Norwich | 20 | 51.3 |
| Slough | 16 | 49.2 |
Most spread out
Where you will be driving
| Council area | Venues | Per 100 km² |
|---|---|---|
| West Lindsey | 9 | 0.8 |
| Fenland | 6 | 1.1 |
| East Cambridgeshire | 7 | 1.1 |
| Ceredigion | 21 | 1.2 |
| North Kesteven | 13 | 1.4 |
| Powys | 70 | 1.4 |
| South Holland | 11 | 1.5 |
| Mid Suffolk | 13 | 1.5 |
| Cumberland | 46 | 1.5 |
| Northumberland | 73 | 1.5 |
| Carmarthenshire | 38 | 1.6 |
| Gwynedd | 41 | 1.6 |
Supply and demand
How many weddings each venue actually holds
The rankings above count places. This one counts weddings: how many civil ceremonies were held on approved premises in 2023, set against how many such premises the area has. It is the closest thing here to a measure of how hard a venue will be to book. The national average is 23.1 weddings per venue a year.
Busiest
| Approving authority | Weddings | Venues | Per venue |
|---|---|---|---|
| Islington | 1,808 | 17 | 106.4 |
| Havering | 546 | 6 | 91 |
| Brent | 772 | 9 | 85.8 |
| Bexley | 417 | 5 | 83.4 |
| Dudley | 607 | 8 | 75.9 |
| Barnet | 585 | 8 | 73.1 |
| Merton | 713 | 10 | 71.3 |
| Barking and Dagenham | 317 | 5 | 63.4 |
| Kensington and Chelsea | 1,806 | 33 | 54.7 |
| Redbridge | 482 | 9 | 53.6 |
| Ealing | 557 | 11 | 50.6 |
| Barnsley | 648 | 13 | 49.8 |
| Luton | 334 | 7 | 47.7 |
| Sutton | 229 | 5 | 45.8 |
| Harrow | 453 | 10 | 45.3 |
Quietest
| Approving authority | Weddings | Venues | Per venue |
|---|---|---|---|
| City of London | 92 | 33 | 2.8 |
| Ceredigion | 108 | 21 | 5.1 |
| Dorset | 775 | 128 | 6.1 |
| Tameside | 68 | 11 | 6.2 |
| Denbighshire | 294 | 38 | 7.7 |
| Vale of Glamorgan | 389 | 49 | 7.9 |
| Powys | 572 | 70 | 8.2 |
| North Lincolnshire | 303 | 37 | 8.2 |
| Conwy | 282 | 33 | 8.5 |
| Pembrokeshire | 416 | 46 | 9 |
| Isle of Anglesey | 184 | 20 | 9.2 |
| Gwynedd | 386 | 42 | 9.2 |
⚠️ Read the busy end carefully. A register office or town hall can hold well over a thousand ceremonies a year on its own, so an area with few premises and one very busy civic venue rises to the top without any of its other venues being hard to book. The quiet end is the more straightforward half: many premises, comparatively few weddings.
Where these numbers come from
Venue counts are this site’s own, from the GOV.UK approved premises list. Population is the ONS 2025 mid-year estimate, taken through Nomis. Land area is the ONS Standard Area Measurement for local authority districts, using the land-only figure — not the one that includes inland water and the sea, which would make every coastal authority look empty.
Both are published under the Open Government Licence v3.0. All 317 council areas on this site are covered; none is estimated and none is left out.
⚠️ One thing a ranking like this cannot tell you: a venue is a venue whether it seats twelve or four hundred. An area near the top has more places, not necessarily more capacity, and the official register records no capacity at all.
The wedding figures
Weddings come from the ONS marriages by area of occurrence dataset for 2023, the most recent published, counting only civil ceremonies that took place on approved premises — not register-office ceremonies held in the office itself, and not religious ones. That is the same category this whole site lists, which is what makes the ratio meaningful rather than merely suggestive.
⚠️ Two limits, both the source’s rather than ours. They are opposite-sex couples only: ONS publishes no area breakdown for same-sex marriages, which are about 3% of the national total. And they are counted per county or unitary authority — the body that approves premises — which is a coarser geography than the council areas ranked above. So Maidstone’s wedding figure is Kent’s. ⛔ The two are never divided into one another.
The Isles of Scilly have no wedding figure at all: four venues and 2,299 residents means the count is too small for ONS to publish.