This stacked bar chart shows the seasonal distribution of 8000 weddings across time. Data is from my personal genealogical database which includes mostly ancestors from rural Québec (Canada).

Posted by Ugluk4242

15 comments

  1. The analysis was performed on personal genealogical data from a GEDCOM file using Python with pandas for data processing and matplotlib for visualization.

  2. This is actually very interesting. Definitely a much higher percentage of winter weddings, historically, than I would have guessed. Nice work OP

  4. Wonder if the winter weddings have anything to do with the agricultural season? Perhaps it’s not so easy to find time when you’re working, something like that?

  5. I wonder if the uptick in summer weddings is just cultural or if it represents the increasing availability of air conditioning in wedding venues.

  6. I’m very interested that historically fall was a much busier time to marry than spring, but that preference has flipped in modern times.

  7. I’m surprised there’s so little spring weddings, it’s supposed to be the season of love

  8. This is great. I’d love to see a similar visual showing average age ranges for weddings over time.

  10. My own theories:

    **Early colony**: Lots of fall weddings because ships with *Filles du Roi* and settlers arrived in late spring/summer, giving just enough time to meet and marry before winter.

    **18th,19th century**: Farm calendar ruled everything. Weddings happened during slow seasons (fall/winter) when people had time and weren’t busy with planting/harvesting.

    **Late 19th century onward**: As people moved off farms, couples could choose when to marry. Spring/summer weddings became popular again because people wanted nice weather for their celebrations.

    Basically went from “when the ships arrive” → “when the crops allow” → “when it’s pretty outside.”

  11. One set of my grandparents got married in winter because they were helping their parents in the farms, and that was the best time to get married and then go away on a 10 day honeymoon.
    The other set got married in spring, and my uncle was born not that long afterwards!

  12. June has been considered lucky for marriages too (Juno being a goddess that rules over marriage), which I could see skewing the summer stats, especially with the rise of pop magazines (and eventually the internet) to talk about it

  13. Can’t marry during Lent. And increasingly, summer is easier for travel because people’s kids are out of school.

  14. Pro tip from an old married dude: Generally speaking the last 6-12 weeks before your wedding are packed with logistical errands – see the caterer, meet with the florist, tailor, venue, etc – and they all happen on the evenings or weekends.

    If you have your wedding late in August you’ll sacrifice 90% of your summer getting this stuff done. Have your wedding in spring and the must-do errands are done when there’s snow on the ground.

    Source: Me and my 2 closest friends got married in the same summer, the happiest of the 3 got married in May.

  15. Only sense I can make of this is winter is downtime for farming, Summer is peak season.

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