The big day is fast approaching when news meets the couple. Maria Øyhagen and Joakim Mehus’ stomachs tingle. They are preparing for the biggest day of their lives. The couple will get married on the island of Bærø outside Kragerø. The family has had a country house there for generations. The wedding will take place on the lawn, and throughout the evening it will be fixed in the party tent nearby. – We think it will be more personal than having it in a rented room. The groom nods in agreement. The couple is planning a personal wedding. The connection to the island of Bærø outside Kragerø will set the framework for the dream day. Photo: Heather Ørbeck Eliassen / news After a quarter, the 27-year-olds will take over the house on the island. Then they will live in the wedding memory, tell the couple. Church loses ground Both Maria’s parents and grandparents get married in the church. She is not religious, and together with her like-minded boyfriend she wanted to find another solution. The couple is far from alone in their choice. In Norway, there are fewer people getting married. But in the last twenty years, more and more people who get married have chosen marriage in the presence of God – in favor of something else. Crown Prince Haakon and Crown Princess Mette-Marit married on 25 August 2001. That year, 53% of all marriages were entered into in the church. Photo: Bjørn Sigurdsøn / NTB – Norway has become a more diverse society, with for example more Catholics and Muslims. Then it is natural that the church’s share of new marriages goes down, says department director in the church council, Jan Christian Kielland. At the beginning of the millennium, the Church of Norway accounted for half of new marriages in Norway. Since then, it has gone downhill for the former state church. The pandemic put an intermediate stop to major church weddings. In 2019, 6805 couples were married in one of Norway’s over sixteen hundred church buildings. It was 34%. At the same time, other religious communities have taken larger parts of the wedding cake. Joakim and Maria will be married by a priest from the Unitar Association. Away from old traditions Ida Marie Høeg is a professor of religion at the University of Agder. She explained that not everyone in previous generations, who got married in the church, has the same in everything that the church conveys. Before, however, there was a greater desire to make the marriage fit into the “right” and traditional framework. Then marriage had to be blessed. The contrasts are a great hundred years back. July 7, 1920 Per O. Skjesol married Ingeborg P. Fiskvik. The photo was taken on the farm Skjesol øvre in Åsen in Levanger municipality. Photo: Asbjørn Nesjø / Åsen Museum and History Team – Today there are other answers to what is right and what society expects, she says. She refers to research on rites of passage which shows that tradition is also important in our time. But it has become a broader concept. – The traditional thing now is not necessarily to get married within the church’s framework, but to have a form of solemn marriage. Maria says that she experiences the Unitarian Association as more neutral than the Church of Norway and the Human-Ethical Association. – With them we can get exactly the wedding we want. The neo-religious philosophy organization writes on its website that they have room for everyone, whether one believes in a god or not. – The bridal couple can choose religious, cultural or traditional content in the ceremony. With us, the couple is the only focus. I think we are quite alone about that, says the unit priest Kjell Morten Bråten. The wedding expresses lifestyle – What the wedding looks like is important, among other things when it comes to sharing on Instagram, says Tone Hellesund. The professor of cultural studies at the University of Bergen explains that many weddings today show individual and independent choices. They express a lifestyle one wishes to be associated with. Many viewed travel and outdoor life highly. Self-realization can therefore be expressed in an airy way. Married 1883 meters above sea level Trude Forberg and Atle Valvik wanted a wedding that reflected their natural joy. It got them a May day in snow drifts and thick shutters, which made the tear-soaked ceremony even wetter. Trude’s friend, the deputy mayor of another municipality, was in charge of the wedding. At the top of Vestfold and Telemark’s highest mountain. From January 2018, the responsibility for carrying out civil marriages was transferred from the courts to the municipalities. Since the municipalities started with weddings, weddings in the mountains have made many new locations possible, such as at Trolltunga in Hardanger. Gaustatoppen has a special place in the heart of Trude Forberg. Her father was station commander at the NATO facility in the mountains there. Now he is no longer alive. – On the way to the top, childhood memories flooded in. It was as if my father was with us anyway, she told me the week after the wedding. The number of civilian weddings like theirs has remained stable over the last twenty years, but the proportion has increased. In 2021, another quarter of new marriages were civil. The wedding as an event Hellesund thinks society is moving in the direction that the wedding should be an event. Wishing for adventure rather than the traditional wedding party is about several things: – By planning a “unique wedding” or dragging the wedding person up to a mountain top, many people experience that they get to better express who they are. Photo: Ole Laget The key word is economics. – In the new Norway, large parts of the population can afford such events, says Hellesund. Creativity costs The couple had hoped to ski down from Gaustatoppen on their wedding day, but traveled wet and satisfied with the course down att. Photo: Private Many couples can afford exactly what they think is the perfect, annleise celebration of love. Transporting a couple of dozen guests to Gaustatoppen and partying at the high mountain hotel has its price. – It is more expensive than a wedding in the church or town hall. But it is definitely worth it, say Trude and Atle. Back in Holmestrand, the budget has long since been blown. The price tag has reached half a million kroner. – And it can still be more expensive, says Maria. Joakim opens his eyes. After the wedding, tell the couple that the day was absolutely wonderful, just as they had hoped. Toastmaster Hans Grane created a good atmosphere during the party. Photo: Ole Laget It quickly becomes expensive to let creativity have free rein. – The party tent alone costs over a hundred thousand kroner, Maria explains.
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From marriage to event – Norway
