I used my genealogical database to track the evolution of the day of the week of 8,383 weddings between the 1630s and 1990s. Almost all are Catholic weddings in Québec, Canada.

I excluded decades with less than 50 weddings to reduce statistical noise.

Posted by Ugluk4242

26 comments

  1. Data source: personal genealogical data from a GEDCOM file

    Tool: Python with packages pandas for data processing and matplotlib for visualization

  2. Seems to really be a chart about the emergence of the weekend.

  3. Seems like a correlation to the rise of the 40hr work week, and a “standard” Monday through Friday schedule?

  4. I really like the visualization. Though the shift to Saturday weddings seems to coincide with the introduction of the 5 day work week, I’m more curious about why Mondays and Tuesdays were so popular before that.

  5. Pretty clearly the impact of the post-industrialization work week.

  6. I wonder if this is an artifact of clerical methods. I would assume Sunday to be reliable the preferred wedding date centuries ago. But none of the civil services would be open on Sunday, so you’d go in later in the week and say “I got married” and they would record that date rather than the day of the wedding. Can’t really think of any other reason Monday and Tuesday would be so popular.

  8. That is interesting data. 

    For the non-weekend days, at least the M-Th ones, I’d be willing to bet almost all of those are city hall style marriages. 

  9. Finally a stacked bar chart that is informative and beautiful! Well done!

  10. This is from [an article](https://www.campop.geog.cam.ac.uk/blog/2025/06/26/wedding-days/) about English weddings, but the same logic may apply regarding why, at least Mondays, were popular:

    >Most telling was the gradual retreat of the Monday wedding – today one of the least popular options outside of bank holidays, but historically one of the most popular celebration days. The day *after* the parish (community) was expected in church, rather than before, was used for relaxation, leisure, and festivity from the medieval period well into the modern era.  

    >A Monday off was, however, never guaranteed, and occasionally workers simply did not turn up on Mondays, expecting custom to be honoured by employers. This irregular holiday, taken by workers when they felt like it, was gradually crushed by employers in the 19th century, and those who tried to take it were increasingly likely to be sacked. 

  12. Where does this data come from? Who is reporting their preferences?

  13. It would be cool to see the absolute total number of weddings per year on top of each bar.

  15. So many comments only looking at the rightmost ~20% of the graph. The earliest preference is clearly Sunday, with other days roughly equal.

    Except Fridays. Why did pre-industrial people avoid Friday weddings? Why did they have a brief surge of popularity in the 1980s?

    Early on it shifts to an overwhelming preference for Monday. This trend lasts over a hundred years and then has another hundred-year resurgence.

    Why did Tuesdays overtake Mondays in the early 1800s? Why did the popularity of Tuesday weddings wane in the latter half of the century? Was it something about agricultural practices? Market week cycles? Train schedules?

    And it’s only at the end of all that that Saturday takes over. So much more to this than “look, I can see the weekend.”

  16. Thank the labour movement who humanized working conditions including 5 day work week.

  18. looks like the wars brought standardized production and then regulated work weeks.

  19. Labor Standards Act (FLSA) in 1938

    That’s when the Monday-Friday 9-5 schedule became the new norm.

  20. Looks like it really started to shift when the common mon-fri work week became popular. Before I would assume that a majority of people were working farming/agriculture and so it didn’t really matter what day of the week you got married (so you might as well just get it done in the beginning of the week.)

    Honeymoon’s also didn’t become popular until the late 1800’s to early 1900’s so that might be another large reason.

  21. Generally, if you have a Monday or Tuesday wedding expect no one to come.

  23. apart from the obvious 5 day work week etc that probably pushed the Saturday in the top of the list,
    I wonder why Monday -Tuesday wedding were so a thing instead of a Wed-Thu-Fri

  24. the evolution of the wedding for a legal procedure to a full on party/celebration

  25. It would be interesting to compare this against legal/administrative changes in Quebec.

    You can clearly see the rise of a five day workweek in the 20th century. But the earlier shifts are more interesting.

    For instance, I wonder if Quebec being conquered by the British has any impact? Quebec is conquered in fact 1759 and in law 1763. Up to the 1760s there’s a gradual rise in Monday weddings but after that there is a shift to Tuesdays. The timing is close enough that it may be British influence changing culture? It would interesting to compare this data against French and British data (or even better colonial American data) from the same time period.

    Likewise the shift away from Tuesdays coincides with the Lower Canada Rebellion (1837-38) and the creation of the Province of Canada in 1840. I don’t know if that had a cultural/political impact.

    Good chart.

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