Even with a prevailing pandemic, Filipinos emerged as the most interested among its Southeast Asian neighbors when it comes to wedding talk, according to a report of an information aggregator.
Information aggregator iPrice reported that the Philippines has the most number of Google searches of different wedding-related keywords compared to Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia.
The most-searched keywords were the following:
- Wedding ring
- Wedding rings
- Wedding band
- Wedding bands
- Engagement ring
- Engagement rings
- Wedding dress
- Wedding dresses
- Wedding venue
- Wedding venues
- Honeymoon destinations
- Honeymoon destination
The group said that the keywords being searched also included their local translations.
According to iPrice, wedding-related keyword searches in the Philippines are about 3.4 times higher than other countries’ total searches.
The data were gathered from the Google Keyword Planner from January 2019 to December 2021.
The group said that there was a 254% increase in keyword searches in 2021, as compared to the same period in 2019.
The keyword group “honeymoon destination/s” also had about seven times more searches in 2021 compared to 2019, a pre-pandemic year.
According to iPrice, the Philippines is the country with the highest increase in searches for this certain keyword group out of its Southeast Asian neighbors.
However, searchers for the same keyword group decreased in Indonesia and Singapore.
Meanwhile, the searches of keywords for wedding rings and engagement rings in the country also increased by 152% and 120%.
The keyword group for wedding dresses and wedding venues similarly increased by 134% and 147%, respectively.
The information aggregator said that the wedding-related keyword searches in the country peaked in January 2021, March 2021 and October 2021.
The spike in wedding-related keywords, particularly in 2021, came after the Philippine Statistics Authority reported that the number of registered marriages has sunk to a 50-year low in 2020.
2020 is the year when the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic, severely upending people’s lives.
It is also the year when the majority of the countries, the Philippines included, registered their first cases of coronavirus infections.
2020 also saw the major imposition of strict lockdowns or enhanced community quarantine measures to curb the transmission of COVID-19. This resulted in stay-at-home orders which affected businesses and activities in day-to-day lives.
When 2021 rolled in, the world started to pick itself up.
Vaccines against COVID-19 were developed and rolled out in the Philippines. Quarantine restrictions were refined and adjusted to keep the economy thriving amid a current public health crisis.
This prompted renewed interest in activities such as weddings, based on the reported keyword search of Filipinos.
Some of those who got married in 2021 are couples Rocco Nacino and Melissa Gohing, Jessy Mendiola and Luis Manzano, Melissa Ricks and Michael Macatangay, Ara Mina and Dave Almariñez, Angel Locsin and Neil Arce and Ellen Adarna and Derek Ramsay, among others.
