Civil weddings outnumber church weddings — NSO

Close to 42 percent of 490,054 weddings in 2007 were civil weddings, according to latest available data of the National Statistics Office (NSO). Marriages in Muslim, tribal and other religious rites accounted for 22 percent. Marriages in non-Catholic rites were 64 percent of the 2007 weddings versus the 37 percent solemnized in Roman Catholic rites. These percentages are close to those of weddings from 2003 to 2005. Divorce and foreign marriages Of the 8,300 foreign marriages the NSO recorded in 2007, 2,583 of the grooms were divorced. Divorced brides numbered 594. Most of the foreign weddings were between Filipinas and Japanese grooms (2,916) and between Filipina brides and Filipino grooms (2,763). Weddings between Filipinas and American gents were a distant third in the frequency ranking, only 1,015 marriages. Single brides outnumber single grooms, 7,444 as against 5,468. Of June weddings, divorced grooms and civil marriages Marriages in the country happen mostly during summer and the cool weather months of December and January. The NSO collates data from the second copy of the marriage certificates coming from civil registrars nationwide. The 2007 data show May had the most weddings, 53,987 of them, and then followed closely by April, when 53,617 got hitched. December and January are also favored months for tying the knot. Some 51,249 got married in the month of Christmas and family reunions while 50,433 wanted to start the New Year as husband and wife. June is actually at a far seventh place with only 44,148 marriages solemnized. More got married in February, the Valentines’ month and in March, the usual start of summer here in the Philippines. — TJD, GMA News