According to recent data, the proportion of persons in England and Wales who are married or in a civil partnership has dropped below 50% for the first time.
According to figures released on Thursday by the Office for National Statistics, only 49.4 percent of adults will be in a legal union by 2022.
The percentage for 2021, also recently released, was 49.7 percent.
Despite the decreased trend, more people are opting for civil partnerships or same-sex marriages.
The number of same-sex marriages increased from approximately 26,000 in 2015 to almost 167,000 in 2022.
Similarly, the ONS said that the expected number of civil partnerships has nearly doubled in the recent decade, from 120,000 in 2012 to 222,000 in 2022.
The overall statistic for marriage or civil unions was a record low, down from 51.2 percent a decade earlier in 2012.
According to the ONS, comparable statistics date back to 2002. However, data from 1972, while not directly comparable, shows that the percentage of married individuals has never gone below 50%.
According to David Thompson, a partner at law firm Seddons, despite the data, most people “perhaps surprisingly still want to marry”.
“If anything, people are waiting longer to get married. People put off settling down for longer, looking at settling instead for when the time is right,” he told the Daily Telegraph newspaper.
“The big decisions, like the cost of buying a house and bringing up children, push weddings down the list until the couples can afford it,” he added.
Family law firm Grayfords attributed the decline to changing social attitudes to and expectations of relationships, with marriage no longer seen as an end point.
At the same time, marriage is seen largely as a primarily religious practice, at a time when rates of belief are also on the wane.
The ONS figures show people aged under 30 accounted for just 3.2 percent of those getting married or entering a civil partnership, down from 4.9 percent in 2012.
“Attitudes to cohabiting prior to marriage have changed dramatically over the past few decades and as a result, more and more couples are choosing to live together first whilst still intending to marry in the future,” according to Grayfords.
“Cost can also be a factor. The average wedding now costs almost £30,000 ($38,000).”
The civil partnership for gay couples, which confers essentially the same rights and responsibilities as civil marriage, came into force in England in 2005.
It was expanded to include opposite-sex couples in 2019.
Full same-sex civil marriage was eventually introduced in 2014, with the first ceremonies taking place in 2015.