Genes Reunited Blog

With Valentine's Day recently passed and romance in the air, we've been thinking about marriage and how it has changed over the years. Last week was Marriage Week in the UK, a week designed to celebrate the diversity and vibrancy of marriage as the basis of family life timed to include Valentine’s Day (7th – 14th Feb 2011). Marriage Week was created by Richard and Maria Kane and has been held every year since 1997.

Marriage has been around since the Ancient Greeks, although no specific ceremony was required for the creation of a marriage, just mutual agreement and the fact that the couple must regard each other as husband and wife. It was the ancient Roman society that created the conventional ceremony with witnesses where the woman lost her family rights of inheritance of her old family and gained them with her new one.

Interesting Fact! A marriage ceremony typically ends with a kiss because in ancient Rome, a kiss was a legal bond that sealed contracts, and marriage was seen as a contract.

During the middle Ages marriages were often arranged, sometimes as early as birth, and these pledges were often used to create treaties between royal families and nobles. It was soon after that the idea of free choice in selecting a partner began to spread.

So is marriage an old fashioned tradition? Or have we adapted it to be a modern day celebration of love and stability between two people?

Surprisingly marriage remains incredibly popular amongst young people with over 90% aspiring to get married at some point in the future. Although the stereotypical view is that marriages no longer last, every 2 out of 3 first marriages will last until one partner dies. The divorce rate has remained fairly static since the early 1980's. Perhaps this is because of the way society has changed, there is far more freedom to pick a partner of your own choice and to establish a long term, stable relationship before entering into the commitment of marriage.

Civil registrations of marriages began in 1837, so you can find some very important historical marriage records available online at Genes Reunited. For example below you can see the marriage of Albert Windsor to the Queen Mother Elizabeth Bowes-Lyons in 1923.

With the new Spouse Match functionality now available on Genes Reunited, finding the husband or wife of your ancestor has never been easier. We’ll either tell you exactly who your ancestor married, or give you 3 possible matches with one of the options guaranteed to be the correct partner. Check out the new Spouse Match functionality today. http://www.genesreunited.co.uk/search.page/index/bmdindexedmarriages