Lots in the Bay looking for love

Bay of Plenty residents are looking for love - despite the fact divorces are more than half as common as marriages in Tauranga.
Internet dating website FindSomeone has almost 7000 members in the Bay of Plenty - 2.5 per cent of the population.
And the average punter looking for love is a brown-haired man in his late 30s, who has never been married and has a university degree or trade qualification.
There's no man drought online - 52.7 per cent of all members are men.
Most of the website's Bay members are aged 25-35 (27 per cent), followed by 36-44 years (25 per cent), 18-24 (24 per cent) and 45-60 (20 per cent). Even people aged 61 and over are looking for love - 4 per cent.
The average age of members is 35, and the median age 38. And you're most likely to find a brunette - 42 per cent of online daters in the Bay of Plenty have brown hair, followed by blondes and people with black hair.
Most members have never been married (56 per cent) with 26 per cent divorced and 13 per cent separated.
Bay of Plenty members send about 6000 messages to one another a week and 2500 online "smiles".
Another website, NZDating.co.nz, has 18,000 Bay of Plenty members.
Couples who met online could be contributing to the number of marriages in the region.
Latest figures show there were 558 weddings in Tauranga in 2009 - but there were also 320 divorces.
The number of marriages has increased by 25 per cent in the last 20 years. In 1991, just 449 couples tied the knot.
The year with the most marriages was 2007, when 610 couples said "I do".
The number of divorces has fluctuated over the past 20 years, with the largest number in 2007, when 453 couples ended their marriages.
Bay of Plenty Celebrants Association of New Zealand secretary Faye Frelan said plenty of couples still wanted to get married as a demonstration of commitment to their relationship.
"I think people also want to make a statement to family and friends that they are an established relationship, that they are a couple that are strong.
"Sometimes they do it for their children. Often if they have been partners for a long time they feel that they are very settled in that relationship, and they want to put a stake in the ground and be recognised as being married."
Mrs Frelan said many "very young" couples were getting married, some who modelled their relationships on their parents' own long and happy marriages.
"Conversely, some don't want to be like their parents - they may find that their parents have had lots of different relationships, and they want something different for themselves. At quite a young age they want to make a commitment and settle down."
Mrs Frelan said it was human nature to want to pair up.
"The statistics show that people will live longer if they are in a relationship.
"I think there's that whole thing of caring for someone, and being cared for."
She had married several couples who had met through internet dating and said it was a legitimate way of finding a partner.
"The ones I have come across have been very successful.
"One of the couples lived about half a mile from each other but they didn't actually know each other - if it hadn't been for internet they wouldn't have found each other."
Mrs Frelan said during the past four or five years people had become more open about meeting online and there was no longer any stigma attached to it.
"There's all sort of places you can find people - it can be through friends, sports or interest clubs, through socialising, events, the internet - people don't generally meet in bars.
"I think having a shared interest is probably a pretty good start anyway. You have got some common ground."