The latest Australian marriage statistics have been released, strap in for some nerdiness! Thanks to my Celebrant Institute colleague, Sarah for her help deciphering these numbers.

Saturday October 19, 2019 - that was the most popular day to be married in Australia last year. In the most popular season, whilst March was the most popular month, and all marriages were down 4.5% from 2018 to 2019.

The big change was that marriages by civil celebrants continue to increase, with 80.3% of all marriage ceremonies in 2019 created by a civil celebrant.

And the early data from the ABS shows an almost 32% drop in marriages for the first half of this year.

When comparing counts of marriages between April and June with averages for the same period over the past five years (2015-2019), in 2020 marriages were down 62%.

Quick side note, queer marriages were thought to have boomed in 2018 and settled down in number in 2019, but they’ve stayed about the same, from 5.5% in 2018 to 4.9% in 2019.

This is Olly and Emily and me in Port Macquarie on the 19th of October 2019, photographed by Mitch Pohl and you really ought to see their li’l motion picture by Bottle Brush Films