The confinement period from mid-March to mid-May 2020 led to a “stopping of wedding celebrations”, prohibited except for very specific exemptions. During the first confinement, only 538 marriages were celebrated, against more than 25,000 over the period from March 17 to May 10, 2019.
“The resumption of celebrations was authorized from May 11, but always with a strict limitation on the number of guests and a restriction of travel to 100 km around the home, until June 1”, recalls the Institute. . “Because of these constraints, some couples canceled the ceremony and the resumption of marriages in May was very limited: between May 11, 2020 and June 1, 713 marriages took place, compared to nearly 20,000 during the same period. in 2019”.
The most significant decreases take place in Corsica (-39%), as well as in the north of France. The decline is weakest in the South with, in particular -32.8% of marriages in New Aquitaine.
Average age on the rise
The number of marriages “has been falling for around twenty years, but it fell by almost a third between 2019 and 2020”, notes INSEE. 150,000 marriages united couples of different sexes and 4,600 couples of the same sex.
The average age at marriage, which has been increasing for more than 20 years, increased further in 2020: it reached 36.7 years for women marrying a man, compared to 36.3 years in 2019; and 39.3 years for men marrying a woman, compared to 38.8 years in 2019, specifies INSEE.