"Shotgun weddings" go mainstream
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More couples are redefining the "shotgun wedding" stereotype and are choosing to make it official and make a baby all at once.
The big picture: Americans are waiting longer to get married and have kids as they spend more time building careers and a financial cushion.
- Two milestones that have traditionally been viewed as distinct steps — marriage and then the baby carriage — are increasingly overlapping as biological timelines come into play.
Catch up quick: This trend became more prevalent after COVID among urban couples in their 30s "who want to write their own timeline," says D.C.-based wedding planner Noelle Ahmad.
- "The old adage was that you do the wedding first and family later, and now it's more like life just happens when it happens."
- It used to be that getting married was the kick-off to a new, grown-up chapter filled with things like mortgages and combined bank accounts.
- But many of these duos already live together and have intertwined lives, so they're viewing marriage as more of "a symbolic celebration of the life and family they are already actively building together," says The Knot editorial director Esther Lee.
Also out: the old school stigma of the hush-hush "shotgun wedding." Instead, it's all about maximum bump exposure on the big day.
- Case in point: Scroll through TikTok and you'll see couples doing big pregnancy reveals during their nuptials, brides posing with their bellies, and dress shops posting content showcasing maternity wedding gowns.
- "Modern brides do not see a pregnancy as something to conceal with strategic drapery," says Lee.
By the numbers: The percentage of women who gave birth and got married for the first time in the same year has been increasing over the last five years, according to American Community Survey data shared with Axios by University of Maryland professor Philip Cohen.
- It was 10.2% in 2020, and jumped to 11.4% by 2024.
Zoom in: While some couples speed up the wedding planning process to beat the due date, others opt for a smaller ceremony while pregnant, with a larger bash down the road once the baby arrives.
- One of the biggest deciding factors when it comes to planning? Whether mommy wants to party. "[Some brides] just want to throw them back," says Ahmad.
- Many of these couples are also combining celebrations like a bachelorette with their baby shower, and also doing two-for-one honeymoons-meet-babymoons, says Lee.
Reality check: Most people are still waiting to do the standard wedding then baby timeline, The Knot tells Axios.
- Or maybe they're just rewriting things in a different way. The majority of Ahmad's couples? "[They're] on the fence about having kids at all."
