The Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social StructureAlexander Wakelam
As the Summer months finally arrive, many of us – particularly those with extended families or with a large network of friends – will be preparing for the annual cycle of weddings. For some this may have already begun in early Spring and might continue into December. Weddings taking place throughout the year is hardly a novel phenomenon, but a growing diversity on which weekday marriages take place has represented a significant shift in nuptial practice over the last three decades. Since 2021 I myself have been invited to two weddings on a Monday, one on a Wednesday, and two more on Fridays alongside nine Saturdays.
Edmund Blair Leighton, ‘The Wedding Register‘. Bristol Museums, Galleries & Archives.
The ONS’s most recent report on wedding data for 2022 suggests that Saturday was the most popular day throughout that year, accounting for 43.6 percent of the c.247,000 marriages, followed by Friday on 18.2 percent. The results for 2022 were impacted by the continued impact of the pandemic – weddings with no or limited guests did not need to be held on convenient days. The proportion of Saturday weddings in 2022 was less than in 2019, when 47.9 percent of marriages occurred on a Saturday. However, this in turn reflected a decline from 53.9 percent in 2012 (see figure one below). In 1995, 68 percent of weddings took place on a Saturday, while in the late 1970s around three quarters of marriages took place on this day.
Figure one.
But this recent shift away from Saturday, rather than representing something distinct about the post-2000 era, may in fact reflect a return to older patterns of marriage. Before 1900, the idea of a single day of the week dominating marriage patterns would have been baffling.
Early modern wedding days
After the Reformation, Anglican canon law required that marriages took place in the morning, during divine service, in the parish of either the bride or groom – three features which typically elude modern weddings, which usually take place in the afternoon, in a special ceremony, and are far less likely (even if a religious wedding) to take place within a couple’s home parish.
The centrality of divine service is the starkest difference, as it ensured that, unlike in modern weddings, marriages were public events at which the whole congregation ought to be present. They might even have occurred alongside other weddings or church ceremonies such as baptisms.
Gold ring, engraved ‘OBSERVE WEDLOKE’ and inside ‘MEMENTO MORI’ (Remember you must die). England, c. 1500-1600. V&A.
A study of London weddings in the late 1570s found that, unsurprisingly given the canonical requirements, Sunday was the most popular days for weddings, accounting for c.44 percent of marriages taking place in Southwark and Bishopsgate. (By contrast, Sunday accounted for just 5.9 percent of marriages in 2022).
However, Sunday was evidently not the only day couples could marry; in Stepney, a rapidly growing parish in the east end dominated by sailors and shipbuilding, Sunday was already the second most popular day, accounting for 28.2 percent after Monday on 39.0 percent. Monday was the second most popular choice in the other two parishes, followed by Thursday and finally Saturday (accounting for fewer than 10 percent of weddings).
In the 1640s and 1650s, canonical restraint over the timing of marriage was relaxed and then abolished, but couples had already voted with their feet in getting married when it most suited them. In the 17th century, Sunday became a less popular day to marry, while Friday and Saturday also became even less popular. Thursday, as in the period 2012-22, grew in popularity, though for a profoundly different cause. Saturday was, in this period, a typical workday – there was in fact no typical “working week” in this period, as the spread of weddings across the week suggests.
Rather than paying a premium for a wedding on a day when one’s guests are likely to already be free, early modern couples instead paid for privacy, holding weddings on days when attendance at divine service was likely to be more minimal. Couples who could not afford an additional day off were forced to get married publicly on Sunday, while fees for marriages on other days were often greater.
From the Roxburghe Ballads.
At St Olave Hart Street (near the Tower), weddings on Sunday cost 3s 4d but the fees were doubled for weddings held ‘upon a workeinge day’ – a difference today of around £1,800 of income (in addition to lost earnings from taking the day off). Those who could afford the even more expensive marriage by license rather than by banns – allowing for a wedding on any day of the week and in a church of one’s own choice – married at times that were least likely to involve strangers. At St Saviour’s in the 1570s, 46.4 percent of marriages by license took place on Tuesday or Wednesday compared with just 9.2 percent of those by banns. As today, wealth allowed couples control over their nuptials as well as being able to show off to their guests – although today convenience has triumphed over privacy.
The Victorian period to the present
By the Victorian period, Sunday was still the most popular day to get married even though this was no longer a legal requirement for weddings. However, in large part this reflects the association of Sunday simply with a cessation of work, rather than its relationship to religion and divine service.
The decline of the midweek wedding (Table 2 below) is further indicative of the creation of a more formal working week. For most people in the mid-19th century, this meant long punishing hours during the week, absence from which meant no pay or possibly the loss of one’s place.
Most telling was the gradual retreat of the Monday wedding – today one of the least popular options outside of bank holidays, but historically one of the most popular celebration days. The day after the parish was expected in church, rather than before, was used for relaxation, leisure, and festivity from the medieval period well into the modern era.
A Monday off was, however, never guaranteed, and occasionally workers simply did not turn up on Mondays, expecting custom to be honoured by employers. This irregular holiday, taken by workers when they felt like it, was gradually crushed by employers in the 19th century, and those who tried to take it were increasingly likely to be sacked.
Lowell Dobbs Mansel, ‘Sunday Wedding at Heights Chapel, Delph, Saddleworth, Greater Manchester’. Saddleworth Museum.
Things were beginning to change, however. The push for half days on Saturdays and eventually a whole weekend off is evident in Table 2, and influenced the emergence of Saturday as the most popular wedding-day in Manchester by the 1880s. That Friday only became a popular wedding day in the last half century is emblematic of the hard-won right for modern employees, if not to set their own hours, at least to take days off within the working week more freely.
While the days that couples select may vary, many of the themes governing choice of day – particularly the ability to get (and afford) time off work as well as to pay for more expensive “premium” days – are as evident today as they were in the 16th century.
Further reading
- Boulton, J., “Economy of Time? Wedding Days and the Working Week in the Past”, Local Population Studies 43 (1989), 28-46.
- Office of National Statistics, “Let’s get married. Ok – When?” (2024). https://www.ons.gov.uk/visualisations/marriages/marriages/index.html
- Reid, D. A., “Weddings, Weekdays, Work, and Leisure in Urban England 1791-1911: The Decline of St Monday Revisited”, Past and Present 153 (1996).
- Southall, H., and Gilbert, D., “A Good Time to Wed? Marriage and Economic Distress in England Wales, 1839-1914″, Economic History Review 49:1 (1996), 35-57.
- Walton, J. K., “From Institution to Fragmentation: The Making and Unmaking of the British Weekend”, Leisure Studies 33:2 (2014), 202-214.
Tags: history of marriage, marriage, social history, weddings