After an apparent rush to the altar at the turn of the millennium, the number of weddings held each year in Canada appears to have reached a plateau.
"I would say mid-20s to mid-30s is our biggest age group, but we have lots of people in their 40s and even 50s," dress designer Janine Adamyk told Â鶹´«Ã½.
Statistics Canada reports 147,391 couples took their vows in 2003, only 653 more than in 2002 and just 773 more than in 2001.
The most recent peak in marriages occurred in 2000 when 157,395 couples tied the knot.
The marriage rate in 2003 stayed at its record low of 4.7 marriages for every 1,000 population -- less than half the 1940s rate, which peaked at 10.9.
"I think this is a culmination of a trend that began in the 1960s with the women's movement," said William Frey of the Brookings Institution.
The number of marriages increased in only the territory of Yukon and the provinces of Ontario and British Columbia. Interestingly, the latter are the two provinces in which same-sex couples have been allowed to marry since 2003.
In British Columbia, for example, 3.5 per cent of the 21,981 marriages that occurred in the province were between people of the same sex. Of those, 422, or 54.5 per cent, were female couples and 352, or 45.5 per cent, were male couples.
Ontario also allowed same-sex marriages in 2003, but no data on same-sex marriages is available because Ontario's marriage registration forms do not contain information allowing the type of marriage to be identified.
The marriage rate was highest in Prince Edward Island in 2003, with 6.0 marriages for every 1,000 population. The lowest rates in the country were in Quebec with 2.8 marriages for every 1,000 population, and Nunavut, 2.3 per 1,000.
Quebec's low crude marriage rate is due partly to the high proportion of cohabitation in this province. Data from the 2001 Census indicate that in Quebec, 29.8 per cent of all couples lived common-law, compared to 11.7 per cent in the rest of Canada.
And the trend of delaying marriage to an older age continues. In 2003, in Canada (excluding Ontario), the average age of persons marrying for the first time to someone of the opposite sex was 30.6 years for men and 28.5 years for women.
Most marriages in Canada were performed in a religious ceremony, with 75.2 per cent of weddings officiated by a member of the clergy. The highest proportion of religious marriage in Canada was in Ontario, with 98.3 per cent of weddings performed by a member of the clergy. The lowest proportions were in British Columbia (41 per cent) and the Yukon (26.6 per cent).
With a report by CTV's Rosemary Thompson
