There’s been a 20 percent drop in the number of marriages taking place in Clare in the past five years.
461 ceremonies were registered by the Central Statistics Office in this county last year.
The number of marriages taking place in Clare has generally hit around the 500 mark from the mid-noughties to the middle of the last decade.
Ceremony figures here grew steadily between 2011 and 2017, hitting a peak of 617 in that year.
However, since then the number of people tying the knot across the Banner has been falling, reducing by nearly ten percent in 2018.
Lockdowns and pandemic restrictions also haven’t helped matters, with just 230 ceremonies being documented by the CSO in Clare in 2020.
That’s a 61 percent drop on 2019 levels.
While numbers doubled last year to 461, it’s still well below peak levels from a number of years ago.
CSO data also shows 45 same-sex marriages have been registered in this county since 2016’s referendum, with 18 of those being male and the other 27 involving female partnerships.