The groom fingers his collar as he waits nervously before the justice of the peace. The bride is radiant in virginal white. As she makes her way down the aisle, some guests – overcome with emotion – dab tears from their eyes.



But before the couple can exchange their vows, a voice cries out and a man steps forward, proclaiming his love for the groom.

The bride flees in tears and – rather than let the ceremony go to waste – the two men get married instead.

It would have been a disaster, had it not all been carefully planned beforehand: part of the mise en scène of a “fake wedding” – the latest party trend in Argentina.

With fewer and fewer young Argentinians getting married for real, groups of friends in their 20s and 30s are instead paying around $50 (£32) each to attend staged events.

“It all started two years ago with a group of friends: we realized we hadn’t been to a wedding in a long time because hardly anybody is getting married anymore,” says 26-year-old publicist Martín Acerbi. Together with four friends from the university town of La Plata, 32 miles (50km) south of the capital city of Buenos Aires, Acerbi decided to organize a fake wedding instead.



To their surprise the event was a roaring success, and the one-off wedding became a business: Acerbi and his friends founded the Falsa Boda company in November 2013 – and have had steady work ever since.

The company hires real wedding locations, caterers and DJs for the parties, Acerbi said. “These wedding professionals have become our strategic allies, we organize it like it’s the real thing, except the marriage itself is fake,” he said.

Hired actors play the bride, groom and a surprise third party: a spurned lover or secret boyfriend who arrives “unexpectedly” – and with dramatic results.

“Our guests get all the fun of a wedding party with none of the commitment, or the problem of finding someone who is actually getting married,” says Acerbi.

A typical “fake wedding” hosts about 600 or 700 paying guests, with soap-opera style drama and a party lasting until 6am the next morning – the normal timetable for a real wedding in hard-partying Argentina.

Actors play out a different storyline at each event, but each one culminates with the “bride” throwing her bouquet to the female guests.

A ‘bride’ prepares to throw her bouquet. Photograph: Rais Ruiz Fotografia

“The girls were euphoric, as if a cousin of theirs was really getting married, but it was just an actress,” said Pablo Boniface, a 32-year-old marketing manager who recently attended a fake wedding in Buenos Aires. “When the bride arrived, everyone went crazy, pulling out their phones and snapping pictures like she was a Hollywood star.”

Organizer Acerbi says that women are the prime movers of the events. “They’re the first to buy tickets. The romanticism around weddings is clearly still alive, at least in that respect.”

Boniface says he has attended “at least one” genuine wedding, but adds that marriage is hardly ever talked about by members of his age group in Buenos Aires. “I’m single and so are all of my friends of both sexes. Marriage is something we don’t even think about,” he says. “It’s a formality that has nothing to do with love.”

Statistics back up the perception: only 11,642 couples got married in Buenos Aires in 2013, down from nearly 22,000 in 1990. City government statistics show that people are getting married older as well. The average marriage age for women has risen from 28 to 33, while the average for men rose from 29 to 34.

Economics and social changes mean that young people nowadays have precious few real wedding parties to attend said sociologist Victoria Mazzeo, professor of demographics at the University of Buenos Aires and head of the city’s statistics office.

“They are going to see something they don’t do in real life any more,” she said. “The fact is that very few young people get married anymore.”

Figures also show that about half of all marriages in the city of Buenos Aires end in divorce today, with a steady average of about 6,500 divorces granted every year.

Although Argentina is an overwhelmingly Catholic country, church weddings are even scarcer: the number has dropped 61% since 1990, according to figures published last year. Slightly under 60,000 couples got married before a priest in 2011, compared to 155,000 in 1990.

“This sharp drop doesn’t mean there are less couples, it just means less of them are passing by the civil registry,” says Mazzeo. “Civil unions are on the rise.”

A scarcity of men adds to the mix. “In the city of Buenos Aires there are only 86 men for every 100 women, which makes it more difficult for heterosexual women to find partners,” says Mazzeo.

On the other hand, said fake-wedding-guest Boniface, sham ceremonies offer unparalleled chances to meet new potential partners. “It’s easier to meet someone at a fake wedding,” says Boniface. “I’d walk up and introduce myself as a cousin of the groom, and the girls immediately fell into their role. It’s like a game everyone joins in.”