Marriage: Love and Law exhibition catalogue - Flipbook - Page 111
A SPENT FORCE
OR JUST DIFFERENT?
While the wedding of Charles and Diana in 1981 captured the
imagination of people in Australia and elsewhere, another 1980s
wedding was also hugely popular. On 1 July 1987 two million
Australian television viewers tuned into Network Ten’s soap opera,
Neighbours, to experience the church wedding of Scott Robinson
( Jason Donovan) and Charlene Mitchell (Kylie Minogue).
When it aired in the UK in in 1988, there were 20 million viewers.
Despite the widespread popularity of these events—one set
in suburban Melbourne, the other in St Paul’s Cathedral,
London—the marriage rate in the 1980s and 1990s continued
on a trajectory of decline that had commenced in the early 1970s.
But marriage was not a spent force. It continued to evolve.
People were marrying for the first time at a higher age,
embarking on marriage for a second or third time, and,
with 39.6 per cent of marriages celebrated by civil officers,
fewer were choosing a church wedding.
83 Maggie Diaz
Wedding, Mrs. Sandy (detail)
Colour negative
ca. 1970–1986
State Library of Victoria,
H2014.136/232a
83
110
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