According to the first set of official same-sex marriage figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), over 15,000 couples have wed since it became legal to do so at the end of March 2014.
The figures relate to England and Wales, and they confirm that 15,098 couples legally married, with the split between new marriages and conversions from an existing civil partnership being fairly even (7,366 marriages and 7,732 conversions from civil partnerships).
August 2014 was the most popular month in which same-sex couples opted to get married, with 844 ceremonies held.
As part of the report, ONS figures revealed that the majority of marriages were between female couples (55 per cent), while the average age for entering a same-sex marriage was 37 for women and 40 for men.
Since the same-sex marriage law came into effect there has been a significant fall in the number of couples choosing to enter civil partnerships – between 2013 and 2014 there was a 70 per cent decline.
The chance for couples already in a civil partnership to convert their union into a marriage first became a legal option from December 2014, but they are required to go to a register office or similarly licensed premises in order to officially make the conversion.
In the UK, it is only in Northern Ireland that same-sex marriage has not been legalised.
However, a recent vote in the bordering Republic of Ireland showed that 62 per cent of voters supported the country’s constitution being amended in order to legalise same-sex marriage.
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