Civil
marriages account for more than a fifth of weddings while the age of
brides and grooms is on the rise, CSO figures have revealed.
Some 5,146 civil services were recorded in 2007 as 22,756 couples took their vows.
The rate of marriage has dropped in recent years, from 5.2 per 1,000 of the population three years ago to 4.8 last year.
The 2007 data include the most recent detailed figures on marriages from the Central Statistics Office (CSO).
They showed the average age rose to 33.4 years for a groom and for brides to 31.3 years.
Roman
Catholic ceremonies remained the most popular in the country, with
16,854 accounting for 74% of all marriages. Some 526 ceremonies were
Church of Ireland and the remaining 1% made up of Presbyterian,
Methodist, Jewish and other ceremonies.
The CSO said that while
the number of civil services soared following the legislation of divorce
in 1997, the figures rose only slightly in more recent years.
They
were most popular in the Dublin region and for grooms aged over 45 and
for brides aged 40 and over, and more than a third involved at least one
person who was divorced.
There were 2,320 marriages involving at
least one divorced person in 2007, including 449 marriages where both
parties were divorced. Divorced men accounted for 6.5% (1,486) of grooms
while divorced women accounted for 5.6% (1,283) of brides.
The
highest proportion of divorced men who remarried were from the south
east (8.4%) while most divorced brides were from the mid-east region
(7%).
Another 329 men and women who remarried had been widowed.
Figures
showed the groom was older than the bride in 63% of marriages. They
were aged the same in 15% but the bride was older in a quarter.
This
was generally witnessed across all age groups except in the case of
males under 25, where the bride was older in nearly half of marriages.
Regionally,
Ulster men and women were quickest to get to the altar and had the
lowest average age for grooms and brides, at 31.8 years and 29.5 years
respectively.
More than nine out of 10 couples were living in Ireland before they wed, with 84% residing in the same local authority area.
SIC: IE/IE
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