Evaluating sociological explanations for trends in marriage

• Only 30% of weddings in the UK today are religious ceremonies
• Civil weddings have also decreased
• Secularisation would not necessarily have had a profound impact on the number of marriages
• Giddens's pure relationship


  Explains why people are prepared to get divorced and to remarry more than why people might not get married in the first place
• Cohabitation is not necessarily an alternative to marriage
• Cohabitation


  Often it is a "trial run"
• Over 80% of marriages in the UK are between couples who have previously lived as a cohabiting couple