In 2023, 6,504 couples married in Estonia, which was 696 fewer than in 2022. The average age for a person when marrying for the first time was 33.7 years for men and 31.4 years for women.

The data shows that the proportion of people under the age of 30, who are getting married is decreasing. In 1993, 60 percent of newlyweds in Estonia were under 30, whereas in 2023, this was only the case for one in four men (24 percent) and one in three women (34.5 percent) who got married.

According to Statistics Estonia,, 41 percent of all marriages involving Estonian residents last year took place during the summer months. The day on which the highest number of marriages was registered in Estonia last year, was Friday, July 7., when 104 couples got married.

In 1993, only 16 percent of couples already had a child together at the time of their marriage, while in 2023 30 percent of couples have at least one child together prior to tying the knot.

Estonian women (521) were somewhat more likely to marry a partner of another ethnic nationality than Estonian men were (461). In 70 percent of marriages (4,563), one of the spouses was of Estonian ethnic nationality.

Last year, 11 percent of all marriages involving Estonians (726 in total) took place abroad. In half of the marriages registered abroad, at least one of the partners was a citizen of Estonia. The number of marriages between Estonian citizens abroad in 2023 was 41.

According to Statistics Estonia, ethnic Estonians most commonly married other Estonians (3,401 marriages). In 1,949 of the marriages which took place in 2023, at least one partner was of Russian ethnic nationality. In 465 couples, one partner was Ukrainian.

Since January 1, 2024, same-sex couples have been legally able to marry in Estonia. According to preliminary data, a total of 93 same-sex marriages were registered in the first five months of the year, 64 of which were female same-sex marriages and 29 were male same-sex marriages.

Divorces and remarriages

In 2023, 2,648 marriages ended in divorce, with the number of divorces in Estonia remaining below 3,000 for the fifth consecutive year.

According to the data from Statistics Estonia,, one in three people who married had already been married before. Just over half of those who remarried wed a partner for whom it was not their first marriage either. The average age for a man to remarry was 45.2 years, while the average age for a woman to remarry was 41.5 years.

Of the couples who divorced in 2023, 56 percent have minor children together while 89 couple had been married for less than a year. The average mean length of a marriage that ended in divorce in 2023 was 11 years and 11 months, while the median was 8 years. The mean was skewed affected by some extremely long marriages, which ended in divorce in 2023, with seven couples who had been married for 50 years or more getting divorced in 2023.

In 2013, 5,630 marriages were registered in Estonian. By the end of 2023, around a quarter of these (1,395) had ended in divorce.

More information is available here, here and here.

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