The Maltese parliament have recently released figures that show civil weddings have exceeded the number of church ceremonies gradually over the past few years.
While the increase in civil ceremonies can be explained with the recent surge of foreigners choosing Malta to play host to their destination weddings, but studies have shown that church wedding have been on the decline for a while now.
In 2010 there were 740 civil marriages in Malta, but there were nearly double that in 2017 (with a total of 1,349). The correlation of the change in tradition is made all the more clearer when compared to the amount of religious ceremonies in 2010 (being 1,547) and decreasing each year at an average rate of around 48 weddings a year.
While the number of church weddings has been decreasing, 2017 was only the second year that civil weddings outnumbered religious. This, naturally, was bound to continue as 2017 saw the legality of same-sex marriage introduced across Malta – it seems since then that more LGBTQi+ couples are choosing to settle down in Malta, what with the country still holding first place on the Rainbow Europe chart in all categories.
The Rainbow Europe chart is a ranking that lists all European countries in order of how accommodating they are to all walks of life, and Malta holds a high score of 91.04%, trailing ahead of the UK by more than 15%.
This change has been slow but gradual, and with the confirmation now ushering in a new wave of secular ideologies when it comes to marriage in Malta, regardless of any other influencing factors if this trend continues to follow suit with it’s previous years then perhaps the idea of a traditional Maltese wedding under the Catholic faith might soon become a thing of the past.
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