Other motivations include guaranteed good weather (33 per cent) and the desire to roll wedding and honeymoon into one (39 per cent).

It also appears that foreign weddings are no longer the intimate affairs that they once were – more than two million people (six per cent) have recently been invited to an overseas wedding.

The Direct Line Home Insurance research also reveals that 63 per cent of those planning marriage in the next two years will marry in the UK, with their weddings costing them an average of £3,102 each.

Direct Line Home Insurance spokesperson Simon Ziviani comments:

“Affordable airfares, a sense of adventure and the drudgery of British weather mean that overseas weddings are more popular than they have ever been.

“It’s great that couples are choosing to reward themselves in this way, but it’s also extremely important that they make sure that their home contents are fully covered before they jet off.

“Our research tells us that nearly half (48 per

Top five overseas wedding locations:

South Africa (6 per cent)

St Lucia (5 per cent)

Mauritius (4 per cent)

Las Vegas (4 per cent)

Antigua (4 per cent)

The research was carried out online from 3-6 March 2006. YouGov interviewed a total of 2,113 UK adults aged 18 and above. Results were weighted to be representative of the UK population.

* 1,688,050 were married in the last two years. Of these, 405,132 (24 per cent) were married abroad, at an average cost of £4,356. Therefore the total spent on overseas weddings in 2005 was 4,356 x 405,132 = £1,764,754,992.

** 2 per cent of respondents who were married abroad say that they arrived home to discover they had been burgled.