National Records of Scotland (NRS) has published ‘Scotland’s Population 2012 – the Registrar General’s Annual Review of Demographic Trends’.
This report is a compendium that brings together key demographic information from a range of publications produced by NRS and has been produced annually since it was first published in 1855.
The report includes information on marriage and civil partnerships in Scotland, and shows that there were 30,534 marriages in Scotland in 2012. This includes 7,259 marriages (24%) where neither the bride nor groom lived in Scotland, but does not include people living in Scotland who marry elsewhere.
The average age at which people marry for the first time has apparently increased by around two years since 2002, to 32.9 years for men and 31.0 years for women.
According to the report, just over half of all marriages (51%) in Scotland were civil ceremonies, carried out by a registrar – compared with just under one-third (31%) in 1971. During 2012, 8,144 civil ceremonies were conducted at approved places. This is compared to 3,465 in 2003, the first full year of these arrangements.
Most religious marriages were carried out by Church of Scotland ministers (5,508), with clergy from the Roman Catholic Church carrying out 1,827 marriages. Celebrants from the Humanist Society of Scotland, authorised to carry out marriages since 2005, officiated at 3,052 marriages compared with 2,486 in 2011.
The report also reveals that in 2012 there were 574 civil partnerships – 257 male couples and 317 female couples.
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v2.0.
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