(Yicai) Sept. 20 -- The number of newlyweds in China rose 5.4 percent in the first half from a year earlier, thanks to the waning impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.

A total of 3.9 million couples tied the knot in the first six months of this year, data from China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs showed last week.

After peaking at 13.5 million in 2013, the number of new marriages had declined for nine consecutive years, falling to 6.8 million last year, the fewest since 1986 when records started to be kept.

Because of Covid-19 outbreaks and other factors, some couples put off getting hitched in the fourth quarter of last year to the first half of 2023, so the numbers rose a little in the six-month period, experts told Yicai.

Compared with marriage registrations, the delay had a stronger impact on China’s wedding industry, such as banqueting. Some couples who married last year or even earlier did not hold a banquet until this year because of Covid-19, but as a result, the sector has begun a clear recovery.

The number of wedding photo studios and providers of wedding banquet services on Meituan has grown since the start of the year, the online service provider’s data showed in July. Guangdong, Jiangsu, and Shandong were the top three provinces for wedding-related consumption.

Searches on Baidu for hotels to host wedding banquets soared 285 percent in May from a year earlier, against the backdrop of the five-day Labor Day holiday, while searches for wedding photographers surged 126 percent, according to data from the Chinese search engine giant. A woman in Beijing who married this year told Yicai that the boom in business at photo studios was plain to see.

Some Chinese regions have also begun to incentivise couples. Changshan, a county-level city under the administration of Quzhou in Zhejiang province, is giving CNY1,000 (USD137) to those embarking on their first marriage, if the woman is aged 25 or younger. Shangyu district in Shaoxing, Zhejiang province, is also doling out CNY1,000 to each newly wed couple.

Editor: Martin Kadiev