Ways to Get and End Marriage: Relationships between Marriage and Divorce Rituals during the Coronavirus

Abstract

During the pandemic, Hungary was the only country in the world where the number of marriages not only decreased but also increased. Parallel to this, in the five years prior to the pandemic there were not as many divorces in Hungary as afterwards. Every year since late socialism, there were at least 10,000 fewer new marriages than marriages ending in divorce or death; a trend that was broken in 2019 when the government introduced new loans for married people at a favorable interest rate, representing a quasi-money injection to support people officially getting married (instead of merely cohabiting). Based on my digital anthropological research, I focus on the complex relationship between getting married and the end-of-marriage rituals. I found that the changes in the meanings of marriage influenced not only getting married but also the eventual end-of-marriage rituals. All these factors, as well as the specific reasons for divorce and separation (e.g., the desire to remarry), are related to the way in which end-of-marriage rituals are scripted and interpreted.

1. Introduction

1.1. Research Problem and Questions

During the COVID-19 pandemic (2020–2021), Hungary was one of the few countries in the world where the number of marriages not only did not decrease but even increased. Researchers so far have highlighted that many people postponed or cancelled their planned weddings due to legal and health restrictions, injunctions, and changed socio-economic circumstances (see Reynolds 2020). Although the Hungarian government also introduced restrictions, not only did the number of weddings not decrease, but it also even rose. While in 2019, 65,300 couples were married, in 2020 the number was 67,301, showing a 3.1% increase. Additionally, 72,000 couples got married in 2021, which was the highest number since the 1980s.1 Parallel to this, the number of divorces also increased during the pandemic. According to preliminary data from the Hungarian Central Statistical Office, in 2021 18,300 marriages ended in divorce, more than in any year since 2017.2 At first glance it would be easy to think from the increase that forced cohabitation due to COVID-19 gave the final push for the break-up of many marriages that were already in trouble. There is, however, a demographic and bureaucratic explanation for the phenomenon: with the ending of the pandemic in 2021 everything became much easier bureaucratically and it is likely that many divorces postponed from 2020 were settled the following year. But there were still more new marriages than marriages that ended.

I hypothesize that the wedding boom and the rise in divorce rates would not have taken place without intensive collective and individual attempts to reinterpret marriage, weddings, and divorce rituals. In addition, the rethinking, reconstruction and reinvention of these rituals and the institution of marriage were also an inevitable consequence of the social and individual reactions to the rise in weddings and to the divorce rate. As several researchers have already emphasized, during the period of the COVID-19 pandemic—along with the new possibilities (new loans)—regulations and limits became the hotbed of “collective effervescence”,3 and this was the case for planning and decision-making processes connected to getting married and divorced, too (on the parallel, see Woods 2021). Researchers also have highlighted that the restrictions on weddings taking place also revealed the extent to which couples valued getting married (civil, official), as opposed to having a wedding reception or unofficial ceremony. This aspect also was explored by Rebecca Probert and Stephanie Pywell, who studied marriages in Wales and England during the pandemic (see Probert and Pywell 2021). People had to decide why and how they wanted to get married, and exactly why and how they wanted to end their relationship (e.g., legally formal divorce, “religious divorce”, catholic “annulment” ritual or just separate without a legal procedure).

In my paper, I examine what kinds of “old”-“new” interpretations of marriage/getting married, weddings and divorces have come into being, as well as what kinds of “old”-“new” practices have surfaced with regard to ritualization during the “collective effervescence” of the pandemic period. I focus on the complex relationship between getting married and the end-of-marriage rituals.

1.2. Research Design and Methodology

In the following, I present and analyze the results of my digital anthropological research carried out between 2019 and 2022. Since mid-March 2020, the time of the first appearance of COVID-19 in Hungary, I have been investigating Hungarian wedding practices and situations of decision-making involving the planning of weddings and divorces. This paper is part of a ‘multi-sited’ cultural anthropological project that I began in September 2019. As originally planned, it was to include a large amount of “classical” anthropological fieldwork. Due to the pandemic, I had to modify the direction and methodology of the research to involve COVID-19. During my research, due to the virus situation, I was forced to temporarily move over to the digital sphere. The new research method was patchwork ethnography. Patchwork here refers to ‘using fragmentary yet rigorous data’ regarding both empirical findings and the knowledge being examined and to the changed platforms of the transmission of knowledge (see Günel et al. 2020). I archived online and offline media news, legal and health regulations relating to getting married and divorces and the discourses within Facebook reflections on these among Hungarian-language wedding-organizing- and women’s chat-groups, as well as among chat-groups bringing together experts on handling and managing credit.4

Online fieldwork was complemented by “actual” smaller-scale fieldwork. I primarily participated in wedding exhibitions and in the series of religious events called National Marriage Week where I conducted interviews, took photographs, and made voice recordings. This series of religious events is known internationally; it was first initiated by a Christian group in England in 1996 to help relieve the crisis of marriage and people’s individual marital problems (help prevent divorce). Since 2007, it has become popular all over Europe, and by 2020 it was celebrated in 21 countries on four continents. In 2020, Hungarian Christian churches and civil organizations organized National Marriage Week for the thirteenth time to “call attention to the value and significance of marriage as well as to provide help to those preparing to get married or confronted with problems in their romantic relationships”; in 2021 and 2022, it was organized online on YouTube because of the pandemic.5 National Marriage Week is surrounded by significant media attention, both in Hungary and elsewhere, under its aegis businesses, government organizations and various religious groupings, as well as celebrities and private individuals participate (see Činčala 2020, pp. 107–8).

2. Legal, Political Contexts and Structures

First, let us look at the structural context in which couples had to make decisions about their weddings or divorces during the COVID period. Here, I will primarily focus on the politico-legal contexts and structural constraints. Due to the pandemic caused by COVID-19, a variety of politico-legal and health measures and restrictions were introduced in Hungary; similar to those in several other affected countries. In keeping with Government Decree 41/2020 (III.11.), larger gatherings, also including wedding receptions, were first restricted from 11 March 2020, while from March 16, in accordance with Government Decree 46/2020 (III. 16.), they were banned. Since family events, thus, marriage ceremonies, were not considered “events”, it was still possible to hold civil and church marriage ceremonies. From 28 March 2020, in accordance with Government Decree 71/2020 (III.27.), the government also introduced restrictions on the number of participants at civil marriages. Until June 1, civil and religious ceremonies could only have two witnesses and a small number of participants. Certain local municipalities interpreted the number of participants differently. Until May 4, with the easing of the restriction, there was a shorter period (starting around April 18) when not even photographers or videographers were admitted to such ceremonies. The government announced on May 14 that from June 1 “ceremonies with a maximum attendance of two hundred people will be allowed in the countryside and in Pest County.”6

During the quarantine period, from the legislative (government) point of view, the primary goal was to ensure the ease of getting married in a legally valid way (without services), acquiring proof of legal marriage, and ‘obtaining the papers.’ The official civil marriage was introduced in 1894. The new Marriage Act made a radical break with the previous denominational legal systems, regulating marriage entirely from a civil law perspective. From then on, in Hungary a valid marriage could only be the civil ceremony (see Varga 2023, p. 88). This legal-political will of the legislature was confronted with the different interpretations of the complex notion of wedding reception by wedding planners and wedding service providers, as well as by betrothed couples and related needs that point beyond a desire to merely obtain papers.

Beyond pandemic-related central and local restrictions and decrees, another important factor may be mentioned—the role of political, family- and population-policy-related regulations that often determine practical–material considerations and motivations when planning weddings and divorces. For several types of favorable credit packages—for example, the Babaváró hitel (‘Childbirth Incentive Loan’), and CSOK (‘Family Housing Allowance’)—being married and planning to have a child are prerequisites (for details cf. Szikra 2018; Hungler and Kende 2019). The abovementioned family policy measures and subsidies regarding family policy are important for us here because I argue that the timing and reorganization of the weddings that had been scheduled for 2020 may have been influenced by these subsidized credit packages. Every year since late socialism, there were at least 10,000 fewer new marriages than marriages ending in divorce or death; a trend that was broken in 2010 (when the Fidesz-Christian Democrat Alliance formed a government). And from 2019, the number of marriages started to increase, when the government introduced a new loan for married people at a favorable interest rate (Childbirth Incentive Loan), representing a quasi-money injection to support couples officially getting married (instead of merely cohabiting).7 Thus, the high wedding rate is a direct consequence of earlier social policy interventions aimed to stimulate in an economic sense the will to get married. People also got married during the pandemic because they had strong economic, social, cultural, as well as emotional reasons for it. It needs to be noted that the increase in the number of marriages contracted during the COVID-19 pandemic cannot be explained solely by the effect of favorable terms of credit. Among the V4 countries (The Visegrád Group, a cultural and political alliance of four Central European countries: the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia), in 2019 Slovakia also introduced similarly favorable terms of credit (couples under 35 have access to favorable credit from the State Housing Development Fund for the purpose of buying and renovating real estate); nonetheless, during the pandemic there was a significant decrease in the number of marriages.8

The divorces may also have been influenced by the Childbirth Incentive Loan. For those who got married after 2019 but were already planning to divorce (within a year or two) the joint burden of having possibly taken out loans together made the already quite complicated situation even more complex. These favorable loans in the case of divorce turn into ordinary loans or significant punitive interest rates apply to the officially divorced parties.

3. “Old” and “New” Interpretations Connected to the Institution of Marriage: The Changing Idea of “Everlasting Love” Marriage

While earlier anthropological research described marriage as the only legitimate institution based on cohabitation, economic co-operation, sexual intercourse, procreation and childrearing (see Bohannan and Middleton 1968; Goode 1963), nowadays things have changed, thus, rendering earlier definitions meaningless. We need new definitions and explanations. In exploring the new roles, meanings and functions of marriage, I assume that economic, social, religious background and emotions (romantic love) are intertwined at the level of expectations and motivations.

In February 2020, infographics based on the data of the Hungarian Central Statistical Office (KSH/CSO) published on Facebook highlighted that “there has not been such a boom in marriage in nearly 30 years.” The colorful graphic also informs us that in 2019, for 27.7% of marriages contracted, it was a second marriage for either one or both partners.9 The increase in the number of weddings was a central theme of the 2020 National Week of Marriage (held between 9 and 16 February 2020)—“It gives us great pleasure that these days marriage has come back into fashion again.”10 The infographic of the KSH (CSO) was shared by private individuals, dating sites, wedding providers, as well as coaches, mediators, advisors and sites that were connected to the government somehow. The new-found popularity of marriage launched a kind of critical discourse that on the level of public representations also brought about a social crisis of contemporary marriage. The increasing willingness to get married soon became intertwined on the level of public discourse with the real or imagined motivation attributed to the Childbirth Incentive Loan and other credit incentives introduced in 2019. With the idea that people were primarily getting married because of these and other subsidies rather than for love even now, under the more difficult circumstances brought about by the coronavirus. Relevant “external” public discourses primarily explained the significant rise in the marriage rate by economic interests (and the appearance of various credits tied to being married).

My research results concerning the actual experiences of those getting married during the pandemic point in a different direction. What transpired was that the motivations of couples preparing to get married were not black and white but intertwined with feelings, the wish to confirm the relationship, religious expectations, the desire for and fact of having children, as well as numerous economic and material ideas. It is important to emphasize that the recent research points to precisely this and similar connections, i.e., that the motivations for contemporary marriages are a combination of personal, sentimental, religious, and practical considerations. The conclusion that there would be a radical break between “traditional” and “modern” marriages (for similar ideas earlier, see Goode 1963; Giddens 1992; Illouz 2012), and that marriage everywhere is transformed from a relationship based on property relations or economic interests into some kind of an egalitarian intimate relationship is offset or mitigated by those studies that continue to point toward the broader context of the norms of family relations or the economic interests influencing getting married (see Ikels 2004). Jacob Strandell’s writings on contemporary Swedish marriages demonstrates well that intimacy, sentiments (romantic love) and the rise in individualization have not wiped out completely the practical and economic considerations surrounding getting married (cf. Strandell 2018, pp. 75–95). In 2017, anthropologists Stephen Beckerman and Paul Valentine also showed for South American marriages that personal desires and various socio-economic and political needs can be discerned equally among the motivations (see Valentine et al. 2017).

Public discourse during the pandemic, besides emphasizing that nowadays couples were getting married because of economic interests rather than for love and bemoaning this, often foregrounded the worsening divorce statistics too. The increasing attention on divorce is also indicated by the fact that the question of the steps to be taken to prevent divorce became a central idea of the National Marriage Week of 2022. “Let’s stay together!” was the motto of the 2022 event, which had both religious and secular elements in the program. At the opening mass, the first introductory speech following the sermon emphasized the worsening of divorce statistics. The reformed pastor of the Gyöngyös church said:

If a blessing turns into its opposite there should be help. National Marriage Week does not only exist to put marriage at the center but also to help married couples. Here and now in this difficult period, at the time of a pandemic, many marriages have been tested, many relationships have been ruined. During the summer following the first wave the number of divorces rose by 20%, their majority was initiated by women. […] We were protecting ourselves against a virus, we did not protect our marriages. Why do defense mechanisms not kick in, isn’t our marriage as valuable as our own health? It is not fashionable to work on reviving marriages. Marriage is a vitamin, if we use it our immune system is going to be much stronger. Because of the virus situation, this is relevant. […]11

Invited speakers, married couples citing worsening divorce statistics during the pandemic, were discussing global scourges affecting marriage, and the importance of saving marriages.

My research shows that from the “insider’s point of view” of brides the question of divorce appears differently from critical public and religious discourses. Although brides I got to know were aware of the public and church discourses relating to divorce, they primarily viewed these from the vantage point of their own experiences as couples. They interpreted the question from the point of view of their ongoing romantic relationships. Those concerned, when they discussed divorce, did not explain worsening divorce statistics by resorting to the real or imagined fashion of marriages of convenience. A middle-aged woman said: “I am reading the comments, and that there are many relationships that are based on economic interests. Well, in the past there were many more! And there was no divorce, precisely because of shame. One way or another, they held out till death alongside each other.”12 Rather, I encountered cases where the rising divorce statistics and the related vivid discussions, in essence, liberated people preparing to get married from the mental constraint of the idea of “everlasting” marriage. “There are so many divorces, because it no longer comes with social stigma. In earlier times, many couples also lived unhappily because at the time it was not yet acceptable to get divorced.”13—stated a young bride explicitly on an online platform.

Janet Carsten and her co-authors wrote, “In imagining or planning a future marriage, narrating a present one or assessing a marriage’s history, explicit and implicit comparisons are made to other marriages—often of parents, grandparents and other relatives” (Carsten et al. 2021, p. 5). My interlocutors also highlighted the influence of earlier failures known to them from examples among their family and friends where marriages ended in divorce, as well as their familiarity with contemporary discourses of crisis and the overall influence of public opinion. It was also clear that when divorce was a common or perhaps traumatic event within the immediate family, this had an impact on planning one’s own wedding. Despite these experiences and fears, most of my interlocutors came down on the side of getting married; for example, because they had already shared certain life situations with their partner that had deepened, reinforced their love, and made it unequivocally clear to them that they could continue their life together as married partners. Similarly, those brides who expressed interest in other people’s fears about divorce and shared their own concerns in the online groups also decided in favor of getting married, as far as I could tell. Research on contemporary marriages also points out that personal and individual interpretations of getting married increasingly emphasize the realization of individual and personal desires, and biography and personal history gain heightened significance. These researchers also emphasized that personal contexts not only influenced individual behavior but may also have an impact on broader processes (see Davis and Friedman 2014; Pauli and van Dijk 2016). Through personal counterexamples, good experiences are built into contemporary advice and guidance and together they redraw the discourse into one of genuinely happy marriages that overcome crises and represent personal triumphs.

The institutionalization of contemporary experience is well illustrated by the National Marriage Week, the series of events which besides lectures by experts also shares the personal experiences and advice drawn from the well-functioning marriages of “genuine,” “Christian” married couples. At the 2022 series of events, a talk entitled “Let’s stay together! Even if …?” could be heard in which a married couple presented the most important cornerstones of their successful 40-year long marriage or their recipe for happiness to the viewing public (nearly 2000 people watched the video). They adjusted their own experiences to the main theses of Garry Chapman’s book entitled14 “Loving Solutions: Overcoming Barriers in Your Marriage”. The Hungarian-language title of the book, “Maradjunk együtt! Házassági krízisek megoldása” [‘Let’s stay together! Solutions to marriage crises’],15 became the motto of the event. On the edited video recording, the motivations for divorce considered to be the most important also appear. These included bad choice (“not the horse I wanted”), estrangement, sexual problems (e.g., cheating), growing apart, parental interference, children, financial problems, and addictions. The speakers referred to these problems and crises or rather their successful resolution as mechanisms strengthening the relationship.16

Another group of responses to the crisis discourse and to the worsening divorce statistics that also referenced the respondents’ own relationship concerned the possible, planned length of the relationship: whether marriage lasts forever after (as it did in the past when marriage was for life) or whether it will be like contemporary, modern marriages that frequently end in divorce. My online ethnographic observations indicate that brides define marriage as an institution primarily based on harmony, co-operation, joint decision-making, free will and sentiments, but also see it as something that can be dissolved in case of problems (infidelity, unhappiness). Which could mean “everything” or “nothing” at times, e.g., “On my part, nothing… We have been living together happily for 16 years, we have 3 children, we don’t need a certificate” or “What does it mean? Everything!”17 Marriage simultaneously embodied the concept of an “old” conservative, traditional and a very “new” modern individualized institution that can last forever or can be dissolved as needed.

In my own research, it needs to be emphasized that both in choosing divorce and choosing to stay together we can talk of free choice and not merely (or at least not exclusively) of pressure to live up to conservative values. Thus, for example, in the case of marital infidelity, the marriage can be salvaged; there is couple’s therapy (handbooks, courses, the materials and presentations of the National Marriage Week). Or it may be more advantageous to stay together because of material, economic interests, such as, for example, because of jointly taken out loans; because of it and possible punitive fines, it may be better to stay together, e.g., at least on paper, etc. Here is a response from a middle-aged woman to a post in a couple’s therapy Facebook group: “When I was young, I thought that if he cheated on me, he should go… As a mother I think differently. I could accept an indiscretion. If he falls in love, that’s a different question, I have not thought about what I would do then. I am afraid that the hurt would be too much to continue as if nothing had happened if he were to choose his family after all.”18

If we approach the question from the point of view of actual motivations and practices of divorce observed during the pandemic and take into consideration the context, we find the following. In the cases I documented, the planning of divorce, considering suspending a marriage (separation) and the joint decisions about this are typically triggered either by an unexpected event (infidelity, conflicts) or part of a conflict-ridden longer process, or its final act. Often couples were trying to legally end marriages that have been practically and symbolically long over, because, for example, the next wedding was already being planned. A wide array of international research reported that the close proximity people were forced into during the pandemic was the final straw that led to the dissolution of numerous already not too well-functioning marriages (see Domokos 2021). My findings also show that this, as well as the general insecurity during the pandemic, generated conflicts leading to divorce, or to unofficial separation; however, in many cases, proximity strengthened relationships. In those cases, when the problem was not resolved after all, and the married couple decided to divorce (or prior to this or at times substituting for it separated), they often cited the pandemic as their reason, besides other ones—infidelity, differences of opinion, unhappiness, boredom, or a series of disappointments. It is important to emphasize that according to the relevant narratives, the decision to divorce was always preceded by some kind of attempt to seek a solution (e.g., separation, therapy, various forms of self-help, involving family and friends) or it was part of a longer process of letting go.

4. “New” and “Old” Marriage and Divorce Rituals during the COVID-19 Pandemic: In Search of “True” Rituals

From the point of view of socio-cultural anthropology, for a long time the wedding primarily meant a transitional phase (“rite of passage”, see Van Gennep 1960; Turner 1969; Grimes 2000.) that was set into motion by one of the most important rituals of any society—the rituals of getting married. Until recently, the social, cultural or even personal transformations caused by wedding rituals and ideologies have been primarily dealt with by researchers because of the supposed “rite of passage” nature of the wedding ritual complex (see Kalmijn 2004). These rituals partly bring an end to old relationships and partly initiate new ones by integrating a man and a woman into a legal, at times religious, institution that may regulate the actions of the couple in the future. The wedding meant a kind of transition from being betrothed to assuming the status of a married person (Keller-Drescher 2014, pp. 37–38). The Hungarian ethnographic canon also emphasized the rite of passage aspect of getting married and defined it as a series of actions carried out for the sake of bringing about marriage as an institution (Györgyi 1979, p. 501; Györgyi 1987, pp. 397–400). More recently, researchers have also begun to interpret divorce as a rite of passage. As Laura Arosio wrote: “In contemporary Western society divorce is a transition event in the life course which marks the end of the previous phase, that of marriage, and introduces the divorcees to a subsequent phase characterized by a new balance. […] Although the experience of divorce has the characteristics of a transition event in the individual life course, in contemporary Western societies it has not yet been celebrated as a rite of passage” (Arosio 2016, p. 97).

In the Hungarian case, rather the question is whether weddings are still interpreted and celebrated as rites of passage and whether divorces are considered to be rites of passage? Do the actors primarily “perform” the passage with the weddings (even if they had lived together before the marriage, and even have had children, etc.) or do they rather represent the romantic love (Leitner 2012) or their marriage obligations (Walsh 2005)? How did the new circumstances created by the pandemic influence the meanings and rites of getting married and of end-of-marriage rituals? What rituals did individuals employ to achieve their goals during the pandemic? Why did they decide to have a formal and legal civil marriage ceremony, divorce or even rites without legal components? How did they reinterpret and replan their divorce or wedding in line with the new rules, or did they sometimes break them?

4.1. Rituals of Getting Married

My research shows that the transition and change in status staged through the wedding as a performative goal was not always present; more precisely, it was not present in all aspects of the wedding complex at the level of lived experiences and of articulated ideals and expectations. Weddings, and especially certain aspects of weddings, were not only and exclusively organized for the sake of expressing (materially, emotionally), ensuring, and experiencing the event. Many explained abandoning some of the par excellence rites of passage of weddings; for example, that of the “preliminary” rite of the bride’s farewell, by saying that the necessary transitions and transformations (e.g., the actual material, spatial transition) have already taken place in their lives. Because, for example, the couple has been cohabiting for a long time, they have already purchased their joint home and therefore rituals bringing about transformation, transition or representing them would not have made too much sense: “We decided that taking leave of the parents will not be part of the script, my motto: why, we are not going anywhere anyway. We are 27 but we have been living together for 8 years, we moved to our joint home 3 months ago, so we are not even going to be leaving the nest at that time. […]”19 The above narrative highlights precisely why there is no “leave-taking”. It would not have brought about and/or signaled a true transition; it would only have mimicked it. It would not have been a “genuine” ritual, merely theater, an empty performance. If the transition had already taken place, then, according to the interpretations, the act of getting married was not necessarily a rite of passage; it did not necessarily bring about or represent the transformation. However, the mere fact that ex post facto people wish to celebrate their relationship, love, their act of getting married or their social success also makes it clear that we can only talk of a genuine transition (in the eyes of family, society, and the couple) if some kind of legitimate, beautiful, appropriate, “true” ritual also takes place (Bell 1997).

If we break down the wedding complex and examine the individual occasions for getting married according to their significance, we see that during the pandemic times, legal and/or economic factors that are important only to one of the members of the couple hasten the civil ceremony. For example, (1) only one of the members of the couple attach importance to the civil ceremony for legal or economic reasons; (2) only the bride’s religious motivations call for the Big Day with a church ceremony; (3) the couple’s feelings and emotional motivation (e.g., romantic love) leads them to hold a civil ceremony (they are longing for marriage); (4) or they organize the Big Day because of family pressure (see Leitner 2012; Walsh 2005). One of the most common arguments was that they were organizing a wedding reception because they were simply trying to have a good time, to enjoy themselves among friends and family, or that they would like to celebrate their successes as a couple. However, a civil ceremony conducted with two witnesses on a weekday may only serve to obtain a “piece of paper”, to qualify for the favorable credit opportunities, but it may be a genuine representation of an increase in security, trust and solidarity and of a strengthening of the relationship, of raising the level of the commitment of the couple to a new height through a “veritable” or even “par excellence” rite of passage which is at the same time a legal rite. Along with the official civil ceremony, church ceremonies, wedding receptions or “commitment ceremonies” (see later) are also often interpreted as the real rituals of the act of getting married for religious, spiritual, or individual reasons that are specific to the relationship and for normative reasons as well. Through getting married those concerned could represent and reinforce as well as legitimate their existing relationship (“ritualize the routine”),20 or they could try to create something new from their life together thus far; the next level, the next steps to be taken together. We can see that the conceptualization and identification of the “real” ritual of getting married are manifold and changing, but in most cases, there must be something that they deem to be “true” and “real”.

During the COVID-19 period, the marrying couples, acting as “bricoleurs”, pieced together their various motivations, and different types of information to create their own wedding rituals (see Carter and Duncan 2016). The situation is significantly different in the case of Hungarian weddings. The main options were postponing the wedding and rescheduling it for after the restrictions were loosened, or simply waiting and hoping that the restrictions would pass, minimizing the wedding, or scheduling official wedding ceremonies and receptions (the big day) on a different day. Let us look at these strategies one by one!

Many of the wedding planners and re-designers insisted on big weddings, big family celebrations, spectacular rites, and ceremonies, and at the same time rejected puritanical, guestless, simplified civil ceremonies because they thought the former to be traditional and normative. They considered it to be a legitimate model that they tried to conform to because it “has always been like that”. The most popular and economically viable strategies proved to be restructuring, deferral, searching for new dates, and waiting.

People who held their COVID-era wedding separately from the wedding reception were those who needed the “papers” as soon as possible (they wanted to obtain credit, more precisely, the Childbirth Incentive Loan, they were planning to have a child, or they were preparing to buy a house, build or expand a house), and thus scheduling the wedding was important to them. For them, a puritanical wedding was just fine, as it was all about them and this was what was important to them. In other cases, a small, personal wedding was the couple’s preference, and they took advantage of the regulations to organize such a ceremony. It often happened that in such cases, the couple used the restrictions imposed by the pandemic to justify their own ideas that differed from the expectations of the community or the family. These weddings also acquired their own designation, such as a micro/mini/COVID/quarantine wedding. Couples tried to replace “real”, traditional weddings with these miniaturized versions that evoked big weddings in their details. In such cases, couples got married at the city hall or in a church ceremony in front of two witnesses or the immediate family, without a wedding reception and without wedding providers and services.

Simple, mini weddings with few participants were complemented by large-scale “real” wedding receptions after the lifting of the restrictions. In these cases, one can speak of wedding rites separated from each other in space, time, and function (I call these “piecemeal” weddings). Those who were not thinking of an official mini wedding alone but also of a large wedding reception later, wanted to experience a truly festive, communal event with friends and family, thereby also meeting various family and social expectations on the second occasion. An important consideration was to ensure that this second wedding had a rite of passage aspect; for example, by making the first wedding ordinary, not wearing the wedding ring after the ceremony, or by introducing other wedding rites on the day of the second wedding ceremony. They either celebrated with a church ceremony, or with a new ritual, that of a “commitment ceremony”21 officiated by a “wedding celebrant”. A commitment ceremony is a non-legally binding ceremony. Following contemporary wedding fashion, this new ceremony tries to present biographical, personal aspects of the couple’s relationship, but also, according to traditional norms, perform and “mime” the official civil wedding.

The smaller, two-witness civil ceremonies held earlier and the Big Days (wedding receptions and commitment ceremonies) complementing them at later dates are not the product of innovations during the COVID-19 pandemic, but have been part of Hungarian marriage practices for several years.

However, during the pandemic, their popularity increased significantly, and their earlier sporadic occurrence became a trend. Hungarian rituals are a distinctive subtype of commitment ceremonies practiced internationally in cases of unregistered, unofficial wedding ceremonies. We have relatively little ethnographic data about them. Contemporary anthropological research has primarily written about the phenomenon in connection with certain minority groups, such as Europeans (e.g., British Muslims), as cases of unregistered, unofficial marriages (Akhtar 2018), and LGBTQ weddings as alternatives to Western ones (see Reczek et al. 2009). Although unregistered, unofficial unions are very frequent, not only among the minority groups, but among the majority, ordinary cases (they occur from the United States through Great Britain, in many places), lacking social scientific analysis, we can only get information about these from wedding portals on the internet. Based on this, it seems that worldwide, the most important argument in favor of separating the confirmation ceremony and the Big Day, thus, liberated from the burdens of the formal wedding ceremony, is to allow the couple to pay attention only to themselves, their families, friends, and acquaintances. On the one hand, in the Hungarian case, couples choose “piecemeal” weddings with a commitment ceremony on the Big Day primarily because of the “congestion” of marriage rites and events or because of the extravagance and extraordinary nature of the wedding venue and date, as well as some other family-related or economic circumstances (e.g., illness, pregnancy, the wish to take out a loan). On the other hand, it also seems that by planning their wedding, brides seek to take control of it by making a conscious choice between a formal wedding and a commitment ceremony.

4.2. Divorce Rituals

“I once asked my grandmother why she divorced. The answer was: my Babika, because I married twice!”22

My findings show that the transformations of the meanings of marriage not only influenced the rituals of getting married but also the “end-of-marriage-rituals”. The social and individual reception of modified rituals of divorce often gain new meanings, and the non-official practices signaling the end of the relationship to family and friends both have also had an impact on the meanings of rituals of getting married. Is an official marriage certificate (a mere piece of paper) necessary, is it important, or is it only the performance of the change of status, an affirmation of the relationship that motivates the betrothed couple to get married? What constitutes getting married—a large wedding reception, the official civil wedding ceremony, or the unofficial commitment ceremony mimicking the latter? Did the wedding take place in the company of the broader circle of relatives, acquaintances (wedding reception)—or only involved the immediate family (e.g., a mini wedding with two witnesses)?

As a young married woman has articulated in an online women’s group: “We got married with two witnesses, in jeans, on Monday morning (mini wedding). Then we can simply get divorced because we also underdid the wedding.”23 That is to say, just as for some couples thinking in terms of smaller weddings, smaller (more personal, intimate) divorces lacking external ritual markers may seem legitimate and a good decision, it may happen that some others announce the fact of divorce ritually, involving family and friends, as an analogy of large weddings. As particular interpretations of the rituals of divorce further shade the picture, there are many other variations. It needs to be stressed that the rituals signaling the end of the relationship are not one-time events but constituent parts of a diverse process in several acts, which along with the rituals themselves, are preceded by the weighing of many factors and multiple decisions, such as are official divorce papers necessary, is it necessary for personal or family reasons to have an actual rite of passage of divorce, etc.? Let us see then how the meanings of divorce, or of the rituals of the end of marriage have been modified!

According to my respondents’ interpretations, the end-of-the-relationship rituals may on the one hand bring an end to the emotional and economic union, as well as to the relationships and structures brought about by the marriage, but on the other hand may also fundamentally deconstruct the relationship to the point of restoring it even to the stage prior to getting acquainted. The spouse, just as his family, relatives and friends may change from familiar to unfamiliar, turns into a contextualized stranger (ex, former spouse). However, many stressed that after the divorce the partners may also continue their lives as friends. Life may also continue as accustomed—childrearing may remain a joint venture (joint custody, “shared parenting”), moveable and immovable possessions (real estate), debts and loans, as well as friends and family may remain shared. I have also found numerous examples of cases when the divorce did not bring any kind of transition, rather, as we saw with interpretations of getting married, it merely ritualized changes that had already taken place, ritualized the routine, legitimated and finalized the status quo.24

I documented various types and modes of end-of-the-relationship rituals, including moving apart/separation and formal announcement(s) of the news of the breakup/divorce. Furthermore, the official state sanctioned divorce is thematized as a par excellence legal and emotional ritual, as is the church-sanctioned annulment, when desired. My findings show that official divorce usually takes place after a long time and primarily due to new romantic relationships and especially the desire or need of getting married again (e.g., motivated by taking out a loan, desiring to ensure (legal) paternity in the case of an existing or planned pregnancy through divorce and/or remarriage),25 or other reasons (cheating, abusiveness, a relationship gone bad). A pregnant woman planning her divorce asked the following question in an online group:

We are in the middle of divorce with my husband, which it seems will not be settled this year especially if there is going to be another shutdown, which naturally would affect court cases. Both of us are in a new relationship. I am pregnant, we expect the little one with my partner at the end of December. As things stand now, the baby would be born with the name of my husband but we would not like this. […] A declaration of paternity is not the solution, according to the registry, the little one can only be registered under the name of the biological father after the divorce. If somebody can help with this problem, I would be very grateful!26

One of the many advices given to a pregnant woman who was planning to divorce was the following:

File for the divorce, explain that you are expecting the child of another man and request that your case gets priority. And immediately after the divorce ask for an appointment to marry the father, you can also petition that you don’t have to do the 30-day waiting period and get married before the child is born. There is no other option. If you don’t do this, it is 10000% that the child will be registered under your current husband’s name. There is no way out. And this could lead to all kinds of complications later.27

Practical and emotional motivations together determined the length of time elapsed until the divorce (the placement of children, questions of dividing marital property, accepting, and digesting the fact of separation, mourning the relationship). In cases of peaceful separation, several years may pass before the actual, official divorce, and at times this never happens. In the groups I examined, those concerned often inquired about what could be done if, for emotional reasons, a couple would like to divorce, but due to the favorable loans (Childbirth Incentive Loan) already undertaken this would mean significant financial loss or additional costs. Responses to such questions outlined the options of either financially disadvantageous official divorce (emotional clarity “truly” finalizes the relationship) or of un-official symbolic and quite practical steps lacking legal and other bureaucratic rituals; for example, separation (emotionally more taxing, financially more practical). Those concerned were generally evaluating precisely these two possibilities. To illustrate these, here is an example from a newly married woman (who is planning to divorce):

We took out a loan of 10 million forints [HUF] last September. Our child was born this year, so in principle the loan should be interest-free, but it looks like we are getting a divorce. So, what’s going to happen? Our baby is 4-month-old, repayment is on hold. If let’s say we divorce in January then from January on we must start paying again, what’s more, the interest also has to be paid. How much would that be per month? Is there a way out? If we do not divorce, just separate, is it still interest-free?28

Their end-of-the-relationship rituals were not characterized by official divorce (they delayed, postponed this), but primarily by symbolic and quite practical steps; ritual practices (e.g., separating, announcing the break-up) that lacked legal and other bureaucratic rituals.

Divorce, and concretely the par excellence official divorces then, were often preceded by some kind of “liminal”, transitional phase (see Turner 1969); sometimes even substituting for divorce itself. Rituals of longer- or shorter-term separation or of actual separation and moving apart are not necessarily one-off acts; often, they are a sequence of gradual steps. At the same time, the above-mentioned complex motivations could also lead to or facilitate staying under the same roof under modified rules, including when moving apart would be a financial burden or if the apartment proves to be amenable to joint use, e.g., when it is possible to sleep separately. It is important to mention that the meaning of occasional or permanent living apart could change several times over the course of the process. It also happened that either party, their children, family, and friends, or the possible new love interests appearing on the scene interpreted situationally and in different ways the process and accompanying events of moving out or continuing to cohabit. Separating and living apart may, nonetheless, mean actual liminality which opens the way for several possible outcomes (starting again, continuing with the marriage, returning to cohabitation, choosing the new relationship, or finalizing separation), but it may also mean genuine “ritual” closure.29 In the latter case, separating was also understood as a genuine end-of-the-relationship ritual during the preparation for and executing of the move or perhaps retrospectively. Actual, material and/or emotional transition could be realized.

It is also important to examine what other kinds of practical events are set into motion by the “ritual” of separating. Such could include the dividing of possessions and personal effects, destroying jointly owned objects or hiding them, official de-registration from the earlier shared address, establishing a new home, or taking possession of it. We can also find numerous examples of destroying, “burying”, or packing up shared objects and shared memories and mementos that represent the marriage, including photo albums and the elements of the one-time wedding ceremony (sand, liquid, candle, etc.) get thrown out at such a time, or are put into some out of the way place (box, attic, bottom of cupboard). These can be the result of individual or joint action, too. My findings show that the fact of moving apart often is interpreted as an “actual” divorce, while at other times it is seen as delaying the divorce, putting off making decisions. Both narratives are useful, emotionally satisfying, reassuring, but at the same time could be problematic because, for example, they create a feeling of incompleteness, of unfinished business. Thus, people have divergent opinions about the ending of marriage, just as they also interpret the act of getting married in many ways, as we have seen.

The length of the period of separation is also determined by the length of the already initiated, official divorce procedure. Thus, after how long a process of reflection do the concerned partners initiate the official divorce procedure or whether they even set about initiating it (filing for divorce, division of property) are also important factors. This act, the filling in, signing and mailing of the divorce papers, i.e., filing for divorce, is also often interpreted as a ritual (the ending and the beginning of something). Acts of communication which are also ritualizing acts typically take place at such times in writing and orally are often accompanied by other non-textual practices as symbolic gestures (drinking a toast, clinking glasses, shaking hands).

The length of time it takes to get divorced is also influenced by whether the couple shares a minor child, or whether they have common marital property that needs to be divided. Lacking these, and especially if there is a prenuptial agreement, the official divorce can be completed relatively quickly after a few months’ preparation in one go through an official procedure that takes just a few minutes.

Just as in the case of getting married, the civil ceremony itself is a few minutes long legal ritual (in the case of small weddings, this is what constitutes the act of getting married), the official, legal dissolution of the marriage itself only takes a few minutes (the fee for both rituals without extras is roughly the same). In the latter case (shared children or assets), especially if there is no mutual agreement, the divorce proceeds as a long drawn out series of court hearings toward the outcome, the end-of-the relationship rituals. In such cases, both the long procedure and the involvement of lawyers, as well as the court as an official institution and the need to give testimony may be interpreted as the inverse of the ritual of marriage, as torture, punishment, or being pilloried. At other times, it holds out the promise of a true transition, a par excellence (legal) rite of passage according to which, you need to work for psychological, material, legal changes of status; this is hard, but it guarantees change, a true closure, and the promise of a new beginning. My interlocutors often interpreted the written and oral communication conducted during the court hearings and the occasional testimonies as the symbolic toolkit of the legal ritual.

On the online forums I examined, questions often arose in connection with the length of the divorce process and its psychological effects, including how long does it take, what are the steps, how stressful is it, how is it possible to survive it psychologically, does it really bring emotional closure, what do you feel afterwards, what does it mean, etc.? On these forums, during and after the ritualization process, divorce was interpreted variously, and according to my digital and ethnographic observations the participants distinguished several ritual elements, including, for instance, the court procedures themselves, the preparation for them, the states of mind following them, and then the multitude of rituals of closure and incorporation that followed the divorce decree. Some of the latter include a period of quiet reflection, less often quiet or loud celebration solitarily or with family or friends, online posts announcing the divorce (e.g., “I am free”, “finally it’s over”), and further legal and/or symbolic steps taken (e.g., name change, removing the ring, etc.), experiencing being single, looking for a new relationship, starting dating, etc.

Let us return briefly to the celebratory practices following the legal process. There were numerous examples of quiet celebration, either solitarily or in company. An example of a lonely celebration: “I also opened a bottle of champagne on the occasion of my divorce, I did not skip it because it wasn’t so easy that we go there and divorce and it’s over.” And also, an example for the company celebration: “I could hardly wait for the divorce to come through and for 12 years I did everything in the hopes that the relationship could be changed. When I finally divorced, I celebrated it with my friends.”30 Here, I would only note briefly that the divorce ceremonies and divorce parties organized with friends and family that have become especially popular in Western Europe and Japan these days have not become the norm or the fashion in Hungary yet, despite the fact that various newspaper articles and also couple’s therapists have been writing about these events. In my opinion, the reason why they have not been adopted yet is that even though by now divorce has become socially accepted, for those concerned, it is still a sort of failure. While getting married is the celebration of the successes and the happiness of the couple as a couple, divorce signals their failure as a couple. Although the narrative according to which it is also a kind of success to dare to start our life again, to end something that is no longer working and cannot be fixed, the sense of loss and mourning is stronger, or the joy experienced is mixed with guilty feelings. A lady talks about guilt mixed with relief: “Of course, we broadcast our happiness automatically, but we don’t like to talk about our failure. This is normal. But to stay together for the sake of a piece of paper or a child is not!” “I think this is everyone’s own private business. That one does not celebrate it? Well, a divorce is at some level a failure of both parties. My first divorce was decidedly a relief for me.”31

Finally, I will briefly discuss church “divorce”, the annulment of marriage which in Hungary is relatively rare (at least during the period I examined) and is only necessary for Roman Catholics. This church ritual, which at the same time is a legal and spiritual step was necessary in the following cases: heartfelt desire or the desire for a church wedding ritual in the case of remarriage. If a couple (or one of its members) is planning to remarry and they or their family would like to have a church wedding ceremony, and one or both of them have been married before, they can take the following steps. They marry according to a Protestant ritual, or they begin the annulment process of their earlier Catholic wedding. “My girlfriend married for a second time by converting from Catholicism to Protestantism (she had to have a commitment ceremony) and they married them without further ado at the Protestant church.”32 “They began the annulment process e.g., citing immaturity. They had to prove that at the time of contracting the marriage neither party was ready for fulfilling the function of marriage, because they were not mature in love. This is a long and tiring procedure. You have to start at the local parish and the parish priest will forward the matter to the higher ups. A case like this takes a minimum of two years. (I too started it at one point, but not because of marriage but for emotional reasons.”33 From among the examples I encountered during my research I will discuss one in detail. The example does not merely describe the unfolding of the church “annulment” ritual (and its limitations, the obstacles it presents and the motivations that underlie it), rather it points to the possible interconnections between rituals of divorce and marriage (the previous one and the one that is being planned). Namely, that, as I emphasized already, in the period I examined (which was characterized by high rates of divorce and marriage, and remarriage) the desire to divorce was often dictated by the motivation of getting married again. It follows from the above that the rituals had an effect on each other, they presupposed one another’s existence.

In 2021, a bride posed a plaintive question to her fellow brides and the wedding providers in one of the wedding-organizing online groups I was monitoring. The wedding date was fast approaching. The planned wedding was to include the following rituals: an official (civil) wedding (micro wedding, small reception, with dinner) with immediate family; for the broader family and friends the church wedding would have been the open, public ritual. At the same time, the legally “ex” and ecclesiastically “current” wife of the bridegroom, according to the post, made church “divorce” impossible or slowed it to a standstill. Thus, it seemed increasingly certain that the desired church wedding was not going to happen. “What shall I do with those whom I only wanted to invite to the church ceremony (in Budapest)? I cannot make people go [to the countryside] for the sake of a 20–30-min civil ceremony, [when] they are not invited to the dinner and the reception… I have been crying for hours…” The brides suggested that they should organize a fake civil ceremony, a commitment ceremony (at a holy and/or beautiful venue) and should invite the larger number of guests for that: “Try to find a beautiful church ruin, or a pretty, open space and an MC [Master of Ceremony] or a good friend will do a pretty ceremony. It was also proposed as an alternative that they should hold the commitment ceremony at the venue of the wedding reception and make the official civil ceremony public in the city. “How about reorganizing it to have the civil one where you wanted to have the church ceremony? And [in the countryside] there would be no ceremony, at most you do a sand pouring.” The possibility of getting married in another, Protestant denomination also arose. Another alternative is to hold the ceremony in another denomination and in a different church.34 The fact that the Catholic marriage ceremony came to nothing affected the planned church annulment process, following the wedding it was no longer necessary to obtain a religious annulment; thus, they stopped planning it.

5. Conclusions

I have shown that in Hungary during the pandemic the popularity of marriage and in tandem with it the growing divorce rate and, especially, the related social criticism and accompanying discourses of crisis elicited a variety of reflections from those planning to get married. Reflecting on their own wedding and possible divorce, betrothed couples and newlyweds began to formulate a plurality of responses which also showed some common features regarding why they were getting married or what divorce and marriage meant for them. The pandemic provided topicality and a distinctive context for this. Earlier social norms, roles and ideals temporarily lost their validity and those concerned questioned the old-new functions and meanings of the institution and rituals of getting married. During the pandemic, the rethinking of both was so intensive that couples that earlier had no desire (yet, at all) for a variety of reasons to get married or divorced began to actively plan their married life, their wedding or they began to take steps toward divorce, towards closure in their relationship. People adapted and “modernized” the earlier “outmoded” institution according to their own taste and expectations. Through reinterpretation, they domesticated marriage and at the same time they also tamed and internalized the possibility of divorce. We saw that one of the main motifs of the attempts to reinterpret marriage during the pandemic related to the duration of marriage, the question of divorce, as well as to ideals of individualization and conservatism. According to these more recent conceptualizations, it is no longer an expectation that marriage should last forever, but rather it lasts as long as it satisfies the couple.

My findings show that the complex transformations of the meanings of marriage and getting married influenced the rituals of getting married and the “end-of-marriage rituals” equally. Also, connected to the special motivations of divorce and separation (e.g., the desire to contract a new marriage, simply growing apart or recognizing a bad decision) affected the scripts and interpretations of the end-of-marriage rituals. I am also of the opinion that the new meanings and interpretations of divorce rituals (along with the rethinking of motivations for divorce) may also have influenced wedding practices and motivations. On the one hand, paradoxically they strengthened the functions and meanings of the institution of marriage. My own view is that the (increasing) need for organizing divorce and various end-of-marriage rituals (especially legal ones) indicates at the same time that marriage and getting married did mean something (or once again means something). What can only be dismantled with (transitional or other) rites can only be created and “sanctified” with (transitional or other) rites. We also saw that legal end-of-marriage rituals often only take place with a delay, and that official divorce is primarily hastened by extraordinarily-individual circumstances (e.g., remarriage, pregnancy.) Thus, the “unofficial” end-of-marriage rituals mean many other things too; what is certain is that not all of them are related to transitioning, or rites of passage. We saw that this was also true of rituals of getting married. Thus, the rituals of divorce and getting married may mean everything or nothing and in my opinion their meaning and functions influence each other in multiple ways (especially at the individual level). It is a question of point of view as to which one we are apprehending at a given moment, but if there is marriage there will be divorce too, and if there will be divorce it is quite certain that there will be marriage and there will be weddings.