The first batch of wedding planning businesses that have encountered sluggish market demand are seeking to transform their operations to offer "divorce ceremony" services.
The wedding industry has been mired in prolonged downturn, and the "divorce ceremony" business seems to have emerged as a new niche track. But are people really willing to pay for saying goodbye?
More than a decade ago, in the film *If You Are the One 2*, Qin Fen, played by Ge You, hosted an absurd divorce ceremony — complete with red carpets, vows, and the return of wedding rings, and at the end he smiled and said, "We may end the partnership, but our friendship stays." Back then, the audience mostly took it as the director's dark humor and did not take it seriously. More than ten years later, that plot from the old movie has unexpectedly become a "new track" that many people are eyeing amid the current winter of the wedding industry.
In previous years, the National Day Golden Week was the busiest "harvest season" for the wedding industry all year round — hotel banquet halls were fully booked, photographers worked nonstop, and people across the country held their wedding ceremonies in clusters. But this year, the trend has taken a clear turn. According to the statistics from the Ministry of Civil Affairs for the second quarter of this year, a total of 3.275 million couples registered their marriages in the first half of the year, 264,000 fewer than the same period in 2025; on the other hand, 1.383 million couples completed divorce registrations in the first half of the year, an increase of 52,000 year on year.
In recent years, the wedding business has been shrinking, and divorce follow-up photography and divorce planning have repeatedly hit the hot search lists every once in a while. This spring, the traffic boom around "divorce ceremonies" on social platforms has surged again. A wedding planner in a county in Anhui Province unexpectedly received an inquiry from a client — whether she could arrange a divorce ceremony. The planner asked three times for confirmation, and finally delivered a divorce party for the client for free. In the video, the woman holding the ceremony wore a burgundy dress, standing in front of a black and red balloon wall alone with a bright smile. The standing sign read "Divorce Party, Journey of Rebirth", and the text on the background wall was even more eye-catching — "From now on, I will give flowers to myself, ride a horse through blossoms toward freedom". This video got 354,000 likes on Douyin.
Apart from watching, a large number of netizens left comments like "Sister! Congratulations!" while there was another voice: "The world has become so crazy that I can't recognize it anymore."
Traditional weddings have cooled down during the National Day holiday, while topics related to the "farewell economy" have kept heating up on social platforms: divorce follow-up shooting, end-of-relationship planning, wedding photo destruction, restart parties... In 2026, can divorce ceremonies really become a viable business and a trend?
We interviewed several people working in the industry: former wedding planners who have transitioned to end-of-relationship ceremony planning, photographers who have taken divorce follow-up shooting jobs, county-level practitioners who only treat divorce ceremonies as a joke... Their answers almost overturned the entire table of this new business.
The Farewell Ceremony for Six People
On an ordinary Friday night, in the private room of a restaurant in Shanghai, there were only six people present including Qiqi, the planner and host. No elders, no champagne towers, only close friends of the two parties involved.
"Tonight we gather here to witness the official farewell of a couple." At the beginning of the ceremony, Qiqi was a little nervous. Having worked in the wedding industry for more than ten years, this was the first time she hosted an end-of-relationship ceremony. She had anticipated all kinds of accidents: the two parties quarreling on the spot, emotional breakdown... all of which are high-risk issues at farewell ceremonies.
The entire planning was completed in only three days. Unlike weddings that require half a year of communication in advance and coordination of dozens of details, no one will make thorough preparations for a farewell ceremony long beforehand — one or two weeks of communication is enough, and the core is that the planner needs to pay close attention to the emotional state of both parties at all times on the day of the ceremony.
(Photo / Xiaohongshu)
Following the preset process, the ceremony moved to the session "I Think You Can Be Better". When designing this session, Qiqi's original intention was "through this session, let them speak out their respective grievances". Then came the "item return" session: valuables and souvenirs that they did not want to keep were returned to each other, and shared items were put together for unified disposal. Qiqi noticed that both parties of the separation looked very sad, and the girl even shed tears.
In the second half of the ceremony, the heavy atmosphere gradually eased. Friends sent their blessings, but unlike weddings, "in the past, relatives and friends blessed the two to move forward side by side, now they bless them to find their own selves again". To Qiqi's surprise, she originally thought the man would reject this ceremony, but he cooperated the whole time. The two people who used to hate each other at first sight finally blessed each other peacefully.
This is the only deal Qiqi has closed since her transition.
This summer, due to the prolonged downturn in the wedding industry, Qiqi resigned from her company. When she was unemployed at home in September, she had a sudden whim and decided to try reverse planning, "The end of adulthood also needs decency, and there may be market demand for it". She posted a transition post on Xiaohongshu, with her business covering four major sections: "Secret Farewell Ceremony", "Life Restart Plan", "Emotional Companionship", and "Moving Memorial Scene", with the ideal state of taking one order a day.
But nearly two months later, only one or two people came to inquire about the price from Qiqi, and they were all out-of-town clients. The only deal she closed was this farewell ceremony for her friend. The total cost of meals for six people plus the venue was more than 2,000 yuan, and she did not charge any service fee. Her friend gave her a small gift as a token of appreciation.
Although the experience that day was very good, "it was like finishing a lesson in life", she also realized that such a peaceful breakup is a very rare case. Most separations are full of entanglement and resentment, which are hard to be staged on a ceremony platform.
"It Will Never Become a Mainstream Business"
Xiaoxiong, a wedding photographer who has worked in Guangdong for ten years, gave his verdict on divorce follow-up shooting three years ago: it will never become a mainstream business.
In 2022, a friend asked Xiaoxiong to do a divorce follow-up shooting. He followed the whole process, but he never took this as a formal business to promote, and never shot divorce-themed content again later. "People in the wedding industry who take both wedding and divorce orders will be considered inauspicious by clients." Xiaoxiong explained, "Especially in Guangdong, parents have relatively traditional concepts and are very averse to this." Four years later, he still sticks to his judgment. Occasionally, some peers around him get on the news and gain traffic by posting divorce follow-up shooting videos, but he is very clear that no one can really make a living from this.
This June, a photographer in Liaoning posted a chat record of a client inquiring about divorce follow-up shooting on social platforms, and readily agreed to "shoot for free". That video was captioned "Opening Up a New Track" and got more than 2,000 comments, many netizens in the comment section were waiting for the follow-up of this "ex-couple".
A week later, this photographer updated the follow-up video and came to the conclusion: "For the divorce theme, shooting it once in my life and experiencing it is enough."
Xiaoxiong followed the whole process to shoot his friend's divorce. (Photo / Provided by the interviewee)
He described the experience of that day in the comment section: he waited from 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. to start shooting, wearing sunglasses the whole time to avoid the strange looks from passers-by; after shooting the divorce certificate, he went to shoot the woman's single dinner party; the screenshot of the early stage got 1.2 million views, but the full video was deleted and re-uploaded repeatedly — even with mosaics added, it was still complained by the man for infringement, and the photos of the dinner party were also required not to show faces. He was busy all day without drinking water or eating a meal, did not earn a penny, and finally the woman only gained more than 200 new followers.
Haoyu, who has shot more than 200 weddings in Yunnan, thought from the very beginning that the divorce follow-up shooting business is just an "industry meme".
As a married man who has been married for four years, Haoyu broke down the essence of weddings: "First, it is held for the parents; second, it is held for the money they gave out as wedding gifts; only third, it is held for the newlyweds themselves." A groom in Beijing once told him: "If it weren't for the money we gave out as gifts, I would never hold a wedding, I'm as tired as a dog." That couple's wedding was kept as simple as possible, they tried to save money everywhere, just wanting to get back the money they had previously given out as wedding gifts.
Haoyu did a simple calculation: traditional weddings are a "cost-recovering business". A wedding banquet table costs more than 1,000 yuan, with a minimum of a dozen tables. Plus the planning, photography, makeup artist, and master of ceremonies, the host family will spend tens of thousands of yuan in total, but this cost can be basically covered by the gift money they receive, and there may even be a surplus. "What about divorce ceremonies? Will you return the gift money? Are you going to charge another gift when you invite people to come? It doesn't make economic sense at all." Haoyu said.
Beyond the quantifiable economic accounts, there is a more hidden emotional account behind the divorce ceremony. "It's hard to understand what's the point of spending a considerable sum of money to commemorate your failed marriage." Haoyu believes that in most people's minds at present, divorce still means some kind of "failure". In traditional concepts, this is almost a "family scandal".
The moment they got the divorce certificate and the cup marked "Happy Single Life" were all recorded. (Photo / Provided by the interviewee)
Qiqi also said that the scene of a farewell ceremony is much more "dangerous" than a wedding. "The accidents we fear at weddings are on-site situations such as the newlyweds falling; but when doing farewell ceremonies, all kinds of uncontrollable factors may arise between the two people, such as quarrels or even fights on the spot." The premise that her friend's breakup ceremony could be completed smoothly is that the two parties have peaceful attitudes, full communication in advance, and "both parties are voluntary".
But in reality, most divorces are not peaceful. Haoyu is a post-95s, he admits that almost all of his peers around him "have gotten divorced", or are in a state close to separation. The states of separation are different: some have received the divorce certificate but hidden it from their families, some are barely staying together for the sake of their children, some cannot get divorced easily due to debts, have new relationships respectively and are well aware of each other's situation. He said that when a divorce comes to the end, it often has to face property division — in the divorce ceremony Xiaoxiong shot, there was a session where the two parties signed an agreement to divide property such as rings, gold bars and real estate.
"Facing these cold realities, how can you cooperate calmly and even show it to others?" Haoyu asked rhetorically. Facing the demise of a relationship, Haoyu said: "The relationship between men and women is very private, its demise can hardly be witnessed by outsiders."
The view of Shen Yifei, associate professor of the Department of Sociology at Fudan University, may explain this awkwardness: "The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference." For most relationships that come to an end, both parties don't even have the desire to quarrel, and ceremonies just need strong emotions to drive them.
What's more, the further you go to smaller cities, the more obvious the resistance of concepts becomes. A wedding photographer in a fourth- or fifth-tier city also said that he only did a free divorce follow-up shooting for a friend, and clearly stated that "he will not consider doing it again in the future". Because "small places have heavy traditional concepts, there is no need for that".
Where Does the Trend Come From?
Even though practitioners hold such negative attitudes, the divorce business is still mentioned over and over again, and the source is mostly that the wedding industry is going through a cold winter.
Qiqi has been doing wedding planning in Shanghai for more than ten years. She clearly felt the industry downturn two years ago, and later moved to Hangzhou to do wedding hall planning. Before she resigned this year, she contacted the suppliers, who said that there are almost no inquiries for the schedule in the first half of next year. She gave an example: a banquet hall in a hotel used to host hundreds of weddings a year, but in the past two years, even cutting the number in half is a conservative estimate; during the traditional order-taking window from July to September this year, there were even "almost no orders".
Xiaoxiong's workload also dropped sharply. At his peak, he shot 100 pairs of newlyweds a year, and there were 60 pairs in previous years. But by the end of October this year, he only shot 20 pairs, "It's not just a 50% drop, it's directly cut by two thirds".
Macro data confirms the practitioners' perception. Data from the Ministry of Civil Affairs shows that the number of national marriage registrations has dropped all the way from the peak of 13.469 million pairs in 2013 to 6.106 million pairs in 2024, with a drop of more than half in terms of data; in 2025, it rebounded briefly to 6.765 million pairs due to the "national unified handling" policy for marriage registration and folk customs (the year after the "no-spring year"), and fell back to 3.275 million pairs in the first half of 2026, down about 7.5% year on year.
On January 24, 2026, Foshan, Guangdong. A newlywed couple received their marriage certificate at the marriage registration office located in OCT Harbour PLUS, Shunde. (Photo / A Can)
Industry data shows that in the past three years, 186,000 wedding and travel photography related enterprises across the country have been cancelled or revoked, with an elimination rate of more than 20%. This means that one out of every four new entrants cannot survive for three years. Bow Travel Photography, which once dominated elevator advertisements