The number of marriages recorded last year has dropped to the lowest level since 1960.
According to Stats NZ, marriage rates plummeted with only 10 couples out of every 1000 people eligible to marry doing so. The data is based on people aged over 16 years.
Last year, 19,071 couples celebrated a marriage or civil union - down from 20,949 in 2018.
The numbers are less than half of the rate of 30 years ago and follows a general decline since the peak in 1971 when there were 27,201 couples who married.
Similar drops have also been seen in Australia, Canada, United Kingdom and the United States when comparing data per 1000 people.
Stats NZ population indicators manager Tehseen Islam, "while the number of marriages has been around 20,000 over the last few decades, the New Zealand population is increasing, meaning declining marriage rate".
He said 72 per cent of last year's marriages were first marriages for both partners though. The number is similar to more recent decades, but lower than before 1980.
Meanwhile, there was a small increase in the number of couples who got divorced last year. There were almost 8400 divorces, up from an average of just over 8000 for the past five years.
But Stats NZ said while there is a drop in marriages, people were still becoming partners.
In the 2018 Census data, it showed 61 per cent of the adult population was either married or in a de facto relationship, similar to the 60 per cent of adults who were partnered in the 1986 Census.
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