Marriage statistics for the South East of England

You asked

For the South East of England, please can you provide a breakdown of:

• Religion and ethnicity by each county and town in the South East of England;

• The rate of marriages (opposite-sex and same-sex) by county and town in the South East of England;

• The rate of marriages by month and days across each county and town in the South East of England;

• The percentage of inter-relationships or inter-marriages by each county, town and religion in the South East of England;

• The average spend on weddings by each county, town and religion in the South East of England;

• Any trends / behaviours of people getting married or who have got married by county and town in the South East of England.

Please can you provide at least 3 years of data from your most recent year of data available, for each of the above.

We said

Thank you for your request.

The marriage statistics we publish are derived from information recorded when marriages are registered as part of civil registration. The latest figures available are for 2015; marriage statistics can only be published by us once the annual dataset is considered acceptably complete. More information on the timeliness of marriage statistics is available in the quality and methodology section of our latest marriages bulletin available at:

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/marriagecohabitationandcivilpartnerships/bulletins/marriagesinenglandandwalesprovisional/2015

We do not hold any information on the religion or ethnicity of the parties marrying, or the cost of weddings; this information is not collected when marriages are registered.

We do hold information on the denomination of marriages. Marriage statistics by denomination can be misleading as some religious marriages (for example Muslim and Sikh) can take place at unregistered premises. To be registered as a legal marriage the couple have a further marriage ceremony in a registry office or approved building. Such weddings are coded as civil marriages because only the civil marriage certificate is received.

Marriage statistics are based on area of occurrence rather than area of residence and are only available for counties, unitary authorities, London boroughs, metropolitan counties, metropolitan district as shown in table 14 of our annual marriages release available at:

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/marriagecohabitationandcivilpartnerships/datasets/marriagesinenglandandwales2013

Given the above information, please contact the team directly via email to vsob@ons.gov.uk to refine your data requirements; special extracts and tabulations of marriages data for England and Wales are available (subject to legal frameworks, disclosure control, resources and agreement of costs, where appropriate).