What’s the buzz about getting married in 2022? | Inspiration

The regular appearance of wedding photos on your Instagram does not mean that everyone has started getting married again, quite the contrary. In Quebec, the trend is downward, and has been for decades. But still in 2022, couples are still resisting this trend. Why?

This is a fact that will not surprise many people: in Quebec, we marry less today than 50 years ago. In 1972, the Statistical Institute of Quebec recorded no less than 53,967 marriages, which gave the province a marriage rate of 8.7 per 1000. In 2019 this rate had dropped to 2.6 per 1000 , then to 1.3 in 2020 (due to the pandemic), before rising to 1.7 in 2021, the year in which 14,708 marriages took place.

In 2022, although the figures have not yet been released, we could see a mini boom in the number of weddings, considering all those that have had to be postponed for the past two years. But according to sociologist Annie Cloutier, a specialist in the sociology of the couple and the family, the trend will most likely return to a downward trend in the coming years.

A love story?

The reasons for this decline in interest in the sacred union of marriage in Quebec are above all historical. In the 1960s, with the Quiet Revolution, Quebec turned its back on religion. From a Catholic tradition, the province which until then had been very religious and patriarchal suddenly became secular and progressive, with marriage gradually losing its importance.

“Suffocated by strict standards, the Quebec population felt the need to throw everything out of the blue,” explains Annie Cloutier. For those who are getting married today, there are therefore a multitude of ways to celebrate their union.

“Before, it was necessarily happening in the church. Then there was a party and it was absolutely necessary to invite the whole family, recalls Annie Cloutier. Now, you can get married in all sorts of ways, in a very personalized way. Anyone can apply for a license to marry their friends, and non-religious marriage is recognized by the state.”

Social acceptance of unmarried couples has evolved faster here than in the rest of Canada.

“Even today in the other Canadian provinces, a couple is perceived as being less serious if they are not married,” says Annie Cloutier. We assume that their child will be less well brought up and the family less stable, whereas we don’t have those prejudices in Quebec. »

Also, more people marry in the other provinces because immigration is stronger there than in Quebec, she adds. « [Les immigrés] are often people from more traditional, marriage-friendly societies.”

If people marry less nowadays in Quebec, they are not for all that less in couple, underlines however the sociologist. They prefer cohabitation to marriage mainly because religion is no longer an incentive to marry in the province, she explains.

Love marriages

The fact remains that there are still people who get married in Quebec. But when the religious incentive has almost no more weight, one wonders what motivates them to carry on the tradition.

Émile, 27, has recently been engaged to his partner. And if both decided to unite, it is not by interest for the marriage as an institution or to be recognized by the State as a married couple, but well by love.

« It’s the natural way that we both found to demonstrate the seriousness of our commitment to our relationship, » he explains. We have confidence in our relationship, we believe in its longevity.

Same thing for Anaïs, 35, who married in front of eight people in her yard under construction in Saint-Bruno during the pandemic.

« We really believe in love, » she said simply. We really believe that we’re going to spend our lives together and that’s why we got married. My parents are married, I am surrounded by friends who have been together for a long time and who are happy. In my entourage, there are not many separations.

A milestone to celebrate

Marriage has therefore become more of a commitment in the history of a couple, rather than a moral and religious obligation. A stage in the couple’s life that deserves to be celebrated.

“For many, it’s a rite of passage. We mark something important, which will be recognized by the community, explains Annie Cloutier. We have a party and people are invited, as if we were giving our love social recognition.”

For Émile and his partner, marriage is indeed a pretext to gather with their loved ones. “Our two families live far from each other, we have different gangs of friends, he says. We want our families to rub shoulders, our friends to meet, because that does not happen often in normal times.

After a very small wedding, Anaïs and her husband have not given up on the idea of ​​making their union a big one. party. They thus intend to remarry next year in front of 150 people. “We are really people of party, she acknowledges. We want to trip, share our love with all the people around us!”

Series « What’s the buzz » dissects the latest trends in an uninhibited way. Make your « reminders » during your next dinners by reading it regularly in the section Inspiration from Metro Newspaper.