Almost 30% of marriages registered in Ireland last year were by civil ceremony.
That is according to new figures published by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) today.
It also shows a decrease in the number of births registered during 2013, with 68,930 births recorded - representing a drop of 3,295 on figures from 2012.
The figures from the Statistical Yearbook of Ireland paints a picture of what Ireland looks like today, under a number of categories like people, society, business and the economy.
20,680 marriages were registered last year with the most common form of ceremony being Roman Catholic - followed by 6,096 civil marriages. It also shows the average ages of both the bride and the groom continued to rise.
A summary of the findings | Source: CSO
Almost 37% of the births recorded were to mothers aged between 30 to 34, while the most popular baby names in 2013 were Jack and Emily.
Findings from some of the other categories show the number of people in employment increased to 1.870 million in 2013.
It also shows that more and more Irish businesses are going social. Last year, 46% of firms said that they used social networks such as Facebook to connect with customers.
The statistics also show Irish people enjoy holidaying.
Irish residents made almost 6.6 million trips out of the country last year, 85% of which were to other European Union countries.
Adein Shepherd from the CSO says the civil partnerships figure really stands out.
