It’s another sign that Ireland is becoming a steadily more secular country that more and more weddings are taking place outside churches, or other places of worship. Figures for last year, just released, show that 60 per cent of weddings were religious in nature, with most of the rest divided between “humanist”, “Spiritualist” and civil weddings.
And yes, you read that correctly: Spiritualist weddings. In a way, I have to admire the business acumen of the ‘Spiritualist Union of Ireland’ in going from having almost zero market share a few years ago, to having almost 8 per cent share today. The organisation is scarcely a household name, and yet it presided over more than 1,500 weddings from a total of some 21,000 in the Republic of Ireland last year. Not bad. They seem to have been particularly successful at taking a sizeable share of the marriages now taking place in hotels.
