“It was Romain who made the request. At the end of a long mountain hike, in front of a large waterfall, he knelt down…”, recalls Bénédicte, 26, now married for a year. little over a month. She and her husband are part of these many couples to have said yes after the health crisis and the successive confinements. More than 300,000 ceremonies are even expected for 2023. A record, compared to the 218,000 unions celebrated in 2019. Simple question of the calendar or real underlying trend?
For 97% of people questioned by the study “The French and marriage” (carried out by faireparterie.fr*), love and the desire to symbolize one’s union remain obvious reasons for getting involved. “There was a desire to take a step, to make official a bond that already united us”, summarizes Francesca, 30, referring to her marriage last May. “It’s a celebration full of meaning when we’ve been together for a long time,” confirms Marianne, 29, who is to marry Charles on August 20.
For 37% of couples, religion is also an important reason for getting married. The union is thus seen as a rite of passage, a “sacrament to follow a path of faith”, as explained by Bénédicte, who could not imagine living a whole life without a ring on her finger. “It works like that in my family,” she continues. This desire to reproduce the family tradition is found in many couples with religious convictions. “The fact of not getting married would not have had a negative impact on relations with our loved ones, but unconsciously, we knew that there was a certain expectation on their part”, continues the young woman. Beyond love and religion, “there are also much more concrete interests”, underlines the sociologist Florence Maillochon, author of The passion for marriage (2016). 18% of respondents admit that tax and financial reasons played an important role in their decision. Charles makes no secret of it: “I really want a large part of what I own to go to Marianne and our children, if we have any.”
“You don’t get married to belong to someone”
Some 56% of those questioned in the study say they are precisely motivated by the desire to start a family. But this relationship between marriage and family evolves and responds to new codes and customs, as demonstrated by the changes that are taking place on the side of the surname. For Charles, “it is essential that the children have both names to mark the continuity of the family”. So his wife will keep her maiden name. A desire to free herself from a tradition that she finds outdated, even “frankly patriarchal”: “Traditionally, a woman passes from the yoke of her father to that of her husband by changing her name. , I believe that we do not marry to belong to someone or to change our identity. Sometimes the trend is reversed and the man himself decides to change his surname. This is the case of Sylvain, 40, who intends to take that of his future wife “because we are free to do so”. Wearing that of her husband is indeed a custom that has no legal existence. Departing from it is therefore possible “but it will take time to become part of the mentality”, regrets the researcher Florence Maillochon.
Personalized ceremonies
In the meantime, everyone is trying on their own scale to reclaim the traditions of marriage. By sometimes reinventing the format. Although the religious ceremony remains predominant (in 2022, 36% of couples said yes to the church), secular marriage continues to grow in French society. According to the study, there are 18% of secular unions in 2022, compared to 12% in 2021.
For good reason, this type of ceremony, coming straight from the United States, offers much more freedom to the couple. “It’s about creating a ceremony from A to Z in which the bride and groom tell their story,” says Malorie Tancrez, wedding planner. A watchword: personalization, with, in hollow, the couple’s desire to assert themselves. “In church, we talk a lot about love but it remains very agreed while young people want to express themselves more freely”, notes sociologist Florence Maillochon. “The values carried by the Catholic Church do not correspond to me, I do not find myself in the very conventional and very standardized format, affirms Marianne. The secular option allows us to choose everything from start to finish, including the person who animates, rather than a priest whom we do not know.” For her future husband, Charles, her wedding day is “really the time when you can afford to be selfish”.
A flexible model that can be embellished with rituals according to current trends. Marianne and Charles opted for “the time capsule”. Their loved ones will deposit a symbolic object in a box which cannot be opened until ten years later, or during a particular crisis. “It also means that we have the firm intention of still being together in ten years and being able to open it,” says Marianne, who found this practice on the Internet. During the wedding of Francesca and Benjamin, last May, the close family had the mission to pass the wedding rings from hand to hand before they arrived at the fingers of the spouses. “Knowing that we don’t live next door, Benjamin’s family in France and mine in Italy, it was a way of building a close relationship,” says Francesca.
“Originality has its limits”
Despite all their desires to deviate from the rules, the couples who wish to commit remain after all very traditional, according to Florence Maillochon. All choose to unite “as their parents and grandparents were able to do before them”. They thus remain anchored in their knowledge, their way of life and their certainties. “Marriage remains conventional in form, however personalized it may be, underlines the researcher. Certain traditional and common values still remain: the division of the sexes, the family… Originality still has limits.”
Original or not, marriages also have in common the possibility of leading… to a divorce. According to INED, this is the case in approximately 45% of unions. On average each year, there are thus 130,000 marriage breakdowns. A trend which explains that in reality, since the 2000s, “marriage is no longer in fashion”, as Florence Maillochon repeats. Especially since there are other forms of commitment, such as Pacs. More and more French people are turning to this type of contract. Marianne, herself in a civil partnership with Charles before the engagement request, confirms it: this contract is more flexible with this “engaging, but not too much” side. According to INED, in 2019, more than 196,000 couples entered into a PACSbarely 20,000 less than the number of marriages.
*Representative survey conducted with 1002 participants (men and women) in France distributed online from 03/25/2022 to 04/22/2022