Grooms and brides getting older

The latest marriage statistics from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) confirm the trend of later marrying ages for both men and women.

The average age of grooms in 2002 was 32.5 years, more than two years higher than the average age of 30.2 in 1996, and almost four years higher than the average age of 28.6 in 1990.

Similarly, brides’ average age of 30.4 years in 2002 is two years higher than the 1996 figure of 28.4 and almost four years higher than the 1990 figure of 26.6.

In 2002 almost 60% of grooms were aged 30 or over on their wedding day. This is more than double the percentage of grooms aged thirty or over in 1990 (28%). The proportion of older brides has also more than doubled since 1990, from 16.2% of brides aged 30 or over in 1990 to 44.2% of brides aged 30 or over in 2002.

The number of marriages was up too - 20,556 were registered in 2002 (which works out as 5.2 marriages per 1,000 of the population), compared with a total of 16,174 and a marriage rate of 4.5 per thousand in 1996.

The number of civil marriages almost quadrupled from 928 in 1996 to 3,683 in 2002. This represents an increase from 5.7% of all marriages in 1996 to 17.9% in 2002.

A contributing factor to this increase was the legalisation of divorce in 1997 and the consequential increase in the incidence of re-marriage.

The number of Catholic marriage ceremonies increased from 14,607 in 1996 to 15,908 in 2002.

However, this increase masked a significant decline, from over 90% to 77%, in the proportion of all marriages accounted for by these ceremonies.

The most popular month for marriage in 2002 was August, when 17% of marriages occurred. The least popular months were January and February, with just 3% of marriages occurring in each of these months. Saturday is the most popular day of the week to get married with almost 40% of marriages occurring on that day. The least popular day was Sunday when just 2% of marriages were recorded.