A record low number of marriages last year

Last year, Slovaks had the fewest marriages since 1918, the Slovak Statistics Office reported on Tuesday. Approximatelly 23,800 couples married in Slovakia last year. The main reason for this development was the quarantine measures, according to which Slovak authorities reduced the number of people allowed at wedding receptions due to the spread of coronavirus infection. "At first, at the beginning of 2020, we were surprised by the unusually high number of marriages in February just before the first wave of the pandemic, probably due to superstitions linked to magical numbers as it was a leap year. Big declines were to follow, for example by more than half in April and May. In the summer and at the beginning of autumn the number of marriages increased in the country, while at the end of the year their number fell again, said Zuzana Podmanická from the Slovak Statistics Office.