Tasmania’s crude marriage rate just slipped again

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has released the 2024 Marriages and Divorces data (23 July 2025).

Nationally, marriages nudged up.

In Tasmania, they fell.

Again.

• Tasmania: 2,364 marriages in 2024 — down 5.7% on 2023.
• Australia: 120,844 marriages — up 2.0% year-on-year, national crude rate steady at 5.5 per 1,000 people aged 16+.
• Plus Tasmania’s share of the national wedding market has also dropped to 1.95% from a 30 year high of 2.6% during COVID.

What the ABS says

120,844 marriages were registered in 2024, 2.0% more than in 2023. The largest percentage declines… were in the Northern Territory (7.1% fewer), Tasmania (5.7% fewer) and South Australia (3.6% fewer).

Tasmania recorded 2,364 marriages in 2024 (down from 2,506 in 2023). The national crude marriage rate held at 5.5 per 1,000 people aged 16+.

My friend and colleague at the Celebrant Institute, Sarah Aird, summed up the national picture neatly:

I am genuinely shocked by this, given how we’ve been carrying on about how it feels like less people are getting married. Last year I literally wrote about “the downturn we’ve seen in 2024 with the cost of living crisis etc.” Maybe my other thesis, that people are still getting married but they’re getting married smaller and cheaper, is actually the correct one. That’s one we can’t tell from the stats though.

Sarah also points out that the average age of marriage in Australia has slightly dropped.

The age people get married actually dropped for men (32.8 years as opposed to 32.9 years in 2023) but stayed the same for women (31.2 years old).

Why might Tasmania be lagging?

Short answer: it’s complicated, and the ABS doesn’t publish everything it used to. A few likely pressures:

• Population mix: An older age profile means fewer people in prime marrying years.
• Cost of living: Smaller, cheaper weddings are up; some couples delay or skip the wedding.
• Interstate pull: Couples eloping interstate or overseas for venues, flights, or family reasons.
• Post-COVID settling: 2022’s bounce is well behind us; numbers are normalising unevenly.
• The COVID relationship dip: Less people socialised through COVID, so less people met, less people dated, less people got engaged, so less people are getting married.

The interesting point is how Tasmania has sunk nationally on its share of weddings.

Tasmania for years has been Australia’s favourite domestic-destination wedding location.

Without having to find your passport, get a travel SIM, worry about currenciers, or flying 15 hours, you can be in paradise - on mountaintops or pristine beaches - celebrating at the country’s best wineries and restaurants with some of the best wedding talent you can find.

What this means if you’re planning a Tasmanian wedding

• Vendors are freer in off-peak. Autumn and spring are still busy, but you’ll find more choice on Fridays and winter dates.
• Small weddings shine here. Tasmania suits intimate, meaningful ceremonies — elopements and micro-weddings do especially well.
• Book the right things first. Lock your celebrant (hi 👋), photographer, and venue/date — then the rest is easier.

If you want something simple and legal-first, my Just the Legals option gets you married without the theatre. If you want the full “this is us” ceremony — that’s my wheelhouse too.

What I think Tasmania should do about it

The Tasmanian wedding industry, and the Tasmanian tourism industry, along with government stakeholders often ignore the value and the weight of the local wedding industry, especially considering our numbers pale in comparison to the other states.

But Tasmania bats well above the national average reported by Easy Weddings annual survey that “7% of weddings occur interstate”. Most wedding vendors report that upwards of 30% of their clientle, even more for some, are interstate and international visitors.

Assuming that 75% of Tasmanian weddings spend what the state average for a wedding is, that’s a minimum $50 million dollar annual Tasmanian industry, along with the average 80 guests attending each wedding flying in from across the world, staying at least two nights (I hear from so many guests come down for a week and holiday while they are here for the wedding or elopement) the acecssory industry of guests attending weddings is a $60 million dollar sub section of the massic $3.5 billion Tassie tourism industry.

I simply think that the Tasmanian wedding industry has been cruising for too long and it requires intention, community, unity, and direction - from within and supported by the state and local governments along with the tourism bodies.

Between local wedding venues like Frogmore, Spring Bay Mill, and Sandridge Estate being A-grade plus we are surrounded by natural beauties perfect not only for wedding photography but to frame such a special celebration, everyone in Australia should wed in Tasmania.

The thirty year drop in the marriage rate

The other number that sticks out at me is the national - and Tasmanian - crude marriage rate dropping from 6.0 thirty years ago and spinning down towards 4 today.

I’ve always maintained that as we gain more liberties in relationship and thus marriage we also gain the opportunity to be more intentional with our wedding planning and I see that even more now that COVID has given society permission to elope.

The good news is that we’ve also seen the divorce rate drop by 3% and the lenght of marriages that do end in divorce increase to 13.2 years, which continues my earlier blog post about how the “50% of marriages end in divorce” falsehood.

Further reading

• ABS 2024 Marriages and Divorces (released 23 July 2025 AEST)

• Celebrant Institute summary by Sarah Aird (published 29 July 2025)

Feature image for this blog post by my friend Harley from Bulb Creative.