New CSO data [1] confirm a trend The Iona Institute first highlighted [2] two years ago: the emergence of ‘New Age’ wedding ceremonies that take place overwhelmingly in hotels because it is so convenient. Both the wedding and the reception can happen in the same place. The alternative spiritual ceremonies are often offered as part of the overall wedding package.
The new CSO reports looks at changes to Irish marriage ceremonies in the ten years between 2014 and 2024. It shows that, over the decade, the total number of marriages fell by 7.7pc, even though the country’s population has grown a lot over the same period.
But Catholic ceremonies fell much more sharply, from 13,071 in 2014 to 6,425 in 2024, a drop of almost 51pc. Church of Ireland ones suffered a similar drop. Civil ceremonies are now the most common at about a third of the total when opposite-sex and same-sex marriages are counted together. Among opposite-sex couples, however, Catholic ceremonies still remain the largest category, but only just. (Our previous document [3] focused mainly on opposite-sex marriages while the new CSO’s figures combine opposite-sex and same-sex marriages.)
A caveat is needed. Civil weddings include couples who have a religious ceremony abroad and then need a civil registration for legal purposes.
Likewise, some minority religions in Ireland do not have State-registered solemnisers and so are registered only as civil marriages.
As mentioned, the decline in church weddings is not confined to Catholics. Church of Ireland weddings fell from 443 in 2014 to 193 in 2024, a decline of 56pc. Presbyterian ceremonies fell from 81 to 46. In percentage terms some smaller Christian denominations have seen ever steeper falls than the Catholic Church.
However, the really striking development is the continued growth of what the CSO calls “Other Religious” marriages, some our 2024 document looked at, the first ever to do so. These are what might be loosely called “New Age” ceremonies. They accounted for over a quarter of opposite-sex weddings.
The CSO has now made public a breakdown of “Other Religious” ceremonies that had previously been supplied to The Iona Institute on request. In 2024, the largest such groups providing these ceremonies were OneSpirit Ireland, Entheos Ireland, the Earth Spiritualist Tradition, One World Ministers and Our Spiritual Earth. Many of these bodies present themselves as ‘spiritual’ and deliberately using a non-denominational and highly inclusive language.
Some of these groups are hard to classify. They are not denominations in the ordinary sense. Some are spiritualist, some interfaith, some pagan or nature-based. The new figures even include eleven marriages under the rites and ceremonies of the ‘Temple of Plants’, a group of priestesses which describes itself as non-religious, multi-racial, multi-cultural and multi-dimensional. “We are united in our love for the Earth and all Her realms. Plants are central to our work and seen as an expression of the Divine Feminine.”, they say in their webpage [4].
Overall, the broad trend is unmistakable. Traditional church weddings are declining, while hotel-based, personalised, spiritual ceremonies are growing, often simply for convenience. Since couples can marry in the same hotel where they will hold the reception, many are nudged towards a comprehensive wedding package. As Breda O’Brian argued in our paper [4], if Catholic clergy were more readily permitted to conduct wedding ceremonies in hotels and similar venues, many more couples might choose a Catholic ceremony.