From Gretna Green to Las Vegas, in numbers

At Gretna, 85.3% of marriages in 2025 involved neither party residing in Scotland. National Records of Scotland records 3,492 such marriages out of 4,094. Across the Atlantic, 3,847 Las Vegas licences issued that year list a UK home address. Both records show a place drawing marriage-related activity from beyond its immediate surroundings, with Gretna's outside-Scotland group forming a majority of its marriages.

The source definitions use residence for Gretna marriages and mailing address for Clark County licences. Licence dates are issue dates. These figures do not identify the same couples or establish their nationality, motives or ceremony dates. The method page holds the full definitions, leaving the story here to follow the routes the records can show.

Gretna's visitors in the marriage record

The Scottish table records the place as Gretna, so that is the geography used in these calculations. For 2025, 602 marriages involved at least one Scotland resident, alongside 3,492 where neither party resided in Scotland. A couple from elsewhere in the UK and a couple from overseas can both enter the outside-Scotland group.

Each row pairs the marriage count with the neither-party-resident figure and its share of Gretna's total. The share is calculated within Gretna. The workbook also has a percentage using all Scotland as its denominator; that answers a different question and is not reused as the visitor share in this story.

For a reader considering a destination wedding, that distinction makes the table useful. The count gives the scale recorded at Gretna; the share places couples from outside Scotland within it. Read both columns when comparing years, because a percentage on its own leaves the size of the marriage total out of view. The National Records of Scotland publication supplies the underlying table and its residence notes.

The UK route to Las Vegas

The United Kingdom is the leading non-US country in the recent Las Vegas address files, with 14,048 licences in 2021 to 2025. The 2022 file ends on 22 December, and its missing days are left outside the breakdown. By 'from the UK' we mean the home address on the licence, keeping the route defined consistently across the annual chart.

The UK count rises from 207 in 2021 to 3,847 in 2025. The latest value also exceeds 3,064 in 2019. Those comparison points give the current figure a longer setting. The chart preserves every published year so a couple comparing today's route with an older family wedding can see the intervening record as well as its endpoint.

September has the largest pooled UK issue-month count in the recent window. The UK page carries that monthly chart alongside the age bands and first-or-repeat-marriage mix. A month pattern adds something the annual total cannot: it shows how the licence visits are distributed through the calendar. For a particular month and day, the historical licence calendar gives the countywide range.

England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland

The Clark County source lists the UK nations separately. Combining them gives one UK route while keeping the split visible here. Entries labelled only United Kingdom stay in their own unspecified group, and Ireland and the Crown Dependencies remain separate. A reader interested in Scotland can therefore follow its recorded labels without being asked to treat the entire UK total as Scottish.

The nation rows use the same issued-licence unit as the UK chart. Where a small cell is withheld, another cell is withheld too, so subtraction cannot reveal the hidden value. The published table and aggregate download share those labels.

What the two routes offer a couple making plans

The common thread is visible in the geography: Gretna has a documented marriage connection with places outside Scotland, and Las Vegas has a documented licensing connection with UK addresses. Neither source asks whether an event was an elopement. Their value together is the measured reach of marriage administration beyond a destination's local population, with the geographic definitions left intact.

For someone preparing to travel, the next questions are practical. The Las Vegas licence guide follows the Clerk's application, identification, fee and office-visit instructions. The certified-copy guide follows the document stage after the ceremony. Keeping the application and the later proof in the plan connects the historical figures with the paperwork a couple actually needs to arrange.

UK couples should also read the government's marriage abroad guidance before travelling or paying for documents. The official instructions are the place to check requirements for individual circumstances. The figures here supply the history of the UK route and the Gretna comparison, while those linked government pages supply the process for the plans being made now.