The Strange Rise of ‘Spiritual’ Weddings in Ireland

Two years ago, while examining data on marriage in Ireland, I noticed a rise in what the Central Statistics Office (CSO) classifies as ‘Other religious’ wedding ceremonies.

At first, I assumed these ceremonies were being conducted mainly by Muslim, Hindu or other minority-faith clergy, reflecting Ireland’s changing population. But when I asked the CSO for a more detailed breakdown, the picture turned out to be very different.

Many of these ceremonies were not being conducted by recognisable religious communities at all. They were being performed by groups that, in many cases, have no congregations in the ordinary sense, no parish life, and little resemblance to what most people would understand by a religion. They are, rather, ceremony providers, often offering highly personalised weddings as part of a wider commercial ecosystem around hotels and reception venues.

At the time, I wrote a number of blog posts on the subject, and Breda O’Brien later produced a paper for The Iona Institute based on my research. Since then, I have continued to look into the issue, and in this piece I want to bring that work together.

This week, the CSO released publicly, for the first time, some of the more detailed figures it had previously supplied to me on request. I welcome the fact that this topic is receiving official attention, but I also find the new CSO release perplexing in two respects.

First, it compares 2024 with 2014, even though the CSO is due to publish the overall 2025 marriage figures on 5 May. It would surely have made sense to wait and include the most recent data. Second, the comparison is not always like with like. The CSO’s headline 2024 figures combine opposite-sex and same-sex marriages, while 2014 necessarily refers only to opposite-sex marriages. The CSO’s own data page links separately to datasets for opposite-sex and same-sex marriages, and that distinction matters. 

In the analysis that follows, unless otherwise stated, I compare like with like and refer to opposite-sex marriages.

One of the most surprising discoveries was the scale of the Spiritualist Union of Ireland. In 2024, it performed 1,374 opposite-sex marriage ceremonies. For comparison, that is more than seven times the number of Church of Ireland ceremonies, which stood at 193.

But what is the Spiritualist Union of Ireland?

The organisation was set up by Tom Colton, a self-described spiritual medium. Colton has a serious criminal history. The Irish Times reported that he was disqualified from acting as a company director following a 2014 conviction for the theft of €322,000 from an elderly couple while acting as their accountant, with the trial judge describing his conduct as “extraordinarily dishonest and fraudulent”. That conviction triggered an automatic disqualification from acting as a company director.

However, according to the Irish Times, Tom Colton later pleaded guilty to breaching that disqualification by acting as a director and legal secretary of Grá Agus Solas ULC, a company providing celebrant services for weddings, funerals and baby naming ceremonies, while disqualified. He received a nine-month suspended sentence and consented to a ten-year directorship disqualification. 

Grá Agus Solas, trading as Spiritual Ceremonies, is not the same legal entity as the Spiritualist Union of Ireland. The Spiritualist Union is a separate company and solemnising body. However, the two are closely linked in practice: Grá Agus Solas/Spiritual Ceremonies operates as a ceremony-services platform, its celebrants include officiants of the Spiritualist Union of Ireland, and company records place Grá Agus Solas at the Spiritualist Union’s address.

Despite Colton’s convictions, Spiritualist ceremonies continue to form a major part of Ireland’s marriage landscape, but they are only one part of a much broader and rapidly expanding ecosystem of pseudo-religious ceremony providers.

Over the past few years, my research has documented the emergence of a wide range of organisations offering what might loosely be called ‘alternative spiritual’ ceremonies. These groups present themselves as religious or spiritual bodies, but in most cases they do not resemble traditional religions in any meaningful sense.

Among the most prominent are organisations such as Entheos and OneSpirit Ireland, which together officiate at a large and growing number of weddings each year. OneSpirit Ireland says its interfaith ministers have been active in Ireland since 2008 and that they offer ‘unique and bespoke legal weddings’, funerals, naming ceremonies and spiritual counselling. It also states plainly: ‘We Have No Church.’

What is typically being offered is not membership in a religious community, but a service: a personalised ceremony, tailored to the couple’s preferences, and frequently designed to fit smoothly into the wedding venue and reception.

Some organisations go further still. In earlier work, I highlighted a group that offers not only weddings and funerals, but also ceremonies linked to abortion. This illustrates how far the category of ‘religious’ or ‘spiritual’ ceremony has expanded in practice.

Individuals associated with this broader sector are also involved in wider political causes. Karen Dempsey, the founder of Entheos Ireland, was involved in the Repeal the 8th campaign. In 2017, she was one of about 25 women dressed as red handmaids, inspired by ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, who marched to the Dáil in an event hosted by Socialist feminist group ROSA.

Another celebrant of Entheos is Janie Lazar, the founder and chair of End of Life Ireland, a group campaigning for euthanasia and assisted suicide.

The Temple of Plants is an especially bizarre example. Its rites now appear in the CSO marriage data. The organisation describes itself as ‘non-religious, multi-racial, multi-cultural and multi-dimensional’, while also speaking of honouring ‘the Goddess, our Divine Cosmic Mother’. It says: ‘We are united in our love for the Earth and all Her realms. Plants are central to our work and seen as an expression of the Divine Feminine.’

Such language gives a sense of the highly eclectic and loosely defined belief systems that now fall within the scope of legally recognised solemnising bodies. If they define themselves as ‘non-religious’, why are they functioning as a recognised provider of religious marriage ceremonies under Irish law?

The fact that such rites can appear in the State’s marriage statistics as part of the ‘Other religious’ category shows how elastic that category has become.

Now let us look at the data. They confirm that something significant has changed in a relatively short period of time. Ireland is not simply moving from religious weddings to secular ones. Instead, a large and growing number of couples are choosing ceremonies that are religious or spiritual, but outside the mainstream Churches.

Between 2014 and 2024, the total number of marriages fell by 7.7pc, from 22,045 to 20,348, even though Ireland’s population grew substantially over the same decade. Catholic ceremonies fell far more sharply, from 13,071 in 2014 to 6,425 in 2024, a drop of almost 51pc. Civil ceremonies are now the most common form of marriage when opposite-sex and same-sex marriages are counted together. 

Among opposite-sex couples, however, Catholic ceremonies still remain the largest category, but only just. In 2024, Catholic ceremonies accounted for 6,425 out of 19,680 opposite-sex marriages, or 32.6pc. Civil ceremonies came to 6,392, and Humanist ceremonies to 1,439.

A caveat is needed. Some civil weddings are not necessarily secular in substance. A couple may, for example, have a religious ceremony abroad and then complete a civil registration for legal purposes in Ireland. Likewise, some minority religions do not have State-registered solemnisers, or couples may simply choose a civil registration for convenience.

The decline in church weddings is not confined to Catholics. Smaller Christian denominations have declined even more steeply in percentage terms. Church of Ireland weddings fell from 443 in 2014 to 193 in 2024, a decline of 56pc. Unitarian ceremonies fell by 55pc.

But the most striking development is the continued growth of ‘Other religious’ ceremonies. Among opposite-sex couples, these reached 3,806 in 2024. Adding the Spiritualist Union of Ireland, broadly alternative religious or spiritual ceremonies accounted for over a quarter of all opposite-sex weddings.

Some are difficult to classify. They are not denominations in the ordinary sense. Some are spiritualist, some interfaith, some pagan or nature-based. What unites many of them is not doctrine, worship or community, but personalisation. They allow the couple to design a ceremony around themselves.

That is precisely the point. The broad trend is unmistakable. Traditional church weddings are declining, while hotel-based, personalised, spiritual ceremonies are growing. Ireland is not simply becoming more secular. In some respects, it is becoming more pagan, more eclectic, and more willing to treat spirituality as a consumer preference.

One big reason is convenience. Weddings can now be celebrated in hotels and other approved venues, and alternative spiritual ceremonies are often offered as part of the overall wedding package. Couples can have the ceremony and reception in the same place, without going near a church.

The law, in effect, has reshaped the market. By allowing a wide range of bodies to register solemnisers, and by permitting ceremonies in approved venues, it has created the conditions for a new type of provider to emerge, one that combines spirituality, personalisation and commercial service.

The State should be more honest about what is happening. It is misleading to treat every eclectic, bespoke, self-invented ceremony provider as if it were a denomination in the ordinary meaning of the word. Some of these bodies may be perfectly sincere, but sincerity alone does not make a religion.