Newlyweds Zhang Di and Dai Aijing couldn't contain their excitement when they took Beijing's subway line 2 home as usual, but it had nothing to do with the usual Friday evening escape from work. It was because the countdown to their honeymoon had begun.

"We are heading to the Maldives for a seven-day honeymoon," Zhang told ChinAfrica. "It really is a reward for both of us, because all the trivial matters surrounding the wedding almost drove us crazy."

The couple had enjoyed the most special time of their lives while planning their wedding, but as they explained, nothing comes for free. "The banquet cost over 100,000 yuan ($14,648) and accounted for about 60 percent of our total spending on the wedding. And it was held entirely for the benefit of our parents," said new husband Dai. "This honeymoon, at 35,000 yuan ($5,127), is exactly what we were really hoping for."

Big money sector

In China, the wedding sector comprises over 60 related industries, including wedding photography, wedding-planning, wedding dress production and banquet catering.

Data presented by the 2010 China International Wedding Expo (WICE), held in March in Beijing, shows that direct consumption related to weddings among China's urban residents rose beyond 600 billion yuan ($87.8 billion) in 2009, with expenditure on wedding banquets skyrocketing by 162 percent, wedding dresses by 49.44 percent, and wedding jewelry by 45.65 percent, compared with 2006 levels.

The purchasing power and demand of Chinese consumers is continuously on the rise. "In China's wedding market, the supply always falls short of demand," said Shi Kangning, Director General of the Committee of Wedding Service Industries of China Association of Social Workers.

"China saw a birth rate of 21 per thousand from 1985 to 1990 and that boom generation became old enough for marriage after 2007," he said, underlining a key factor in the industry's rise.

During the past five years, the average annual number of newly registered married couples reached 8.11 million nationwide with urban couples making up 41 percent, according to the China Wedding Industry Development Investigation Report released by WICE 2009.

Shi said that in 2009, the number of newly registered couples in China climbed to 11.46 million, hitting a record high. It is predicted that domestic spending on weddings will jump by 10 billion yuan ($1.5 billion) per year over the next few years.