You asked
How many weddings and civil partnerships took place in England under "the rule of 30" from July 2020 up to the end of August 2020?
How many outbreaks of Covid-19 have been linked to weddings or civil partnerships that took place under the rule of 30 in July and August 2020?
Presumably this information is readily available as the statistics must have informed the government's decision to reduce the number allowed to attend weddings or civil partnerships from thirty to fifteen, from 28 September 2020.
Please also provide the approximate locations in England of outbreaks of Covid-19 which were linked to weddings or civil partnerships, and whether there is any evidence that the "rule of 30" was broken on any of the relevant occasions.
Please provide the breakdown by different religious places of worship/licensed venue, where the wedding or civil partnership ceremony has been linked to an outbreak of Covid-19.
We said
Thank you for enquiry, our marriage data is taken from the Marriage Certificate.
Our marriage statistics are published two years in arrears. Details of civil marriage registrations come to us quite quickly as this is an electronic process. However, the recording of religious marriages is still paper-based and therefore takes a long time before reaching us. There several stages involved:
- Paper records from churches which are then sent to
- local registration service, who then forward to
- General Register Office who then manually key in details of each paper record, which is then sent to
- The Office for National Statistics.
Delays can be caused by the closure of churches and changes in the clergy. We wait 2 years to receive as many religious marriage registration records as possible in order to balance timeliness against completeness of the data.
Therefore, we are unable to provide any statistics on Marriages in England and Wales held in 2020 until 2022. Civil Partnerships in England and Wales for 2020 will be available in August/September 2021.
Further information can be found in our User Guide to Marriage Statistics.
The number of guests invited or attending weddings is not recorded as part of the marriage registration and therefore we consider this information not held.
Public Health England and NHS Digital would be better placed to answer your enquiry regarding COVID-19 outbreaks linked to weddings or Civil Partnership ceremonies, as we do not have access to this data.