Like most of the world, Mexico celebrates Valentine's Day (día de San Valentín) on the 14th of February. Gifts of chocolates, flowers and stuffed teddy bears are commonly given. Mexico has added a little extra to this holiday by creating a collective weddings or Bodas Colectivas, at no cost.
Most Mexican cities have Bodas Colectivas or a mass wedding ceremony a few days after Valentine's Day. Usually Civil Unions in Oaxaca cost around 1100 pesos or 60 USD (roughly a week's wages for an unskilled worker), but Bodas Colectivas are held for free. The Mayor of the city will hand out the marriage certificates, there will be live music, a wedding cake, a raffle for gifts and tamales.
To be married you need voters card (credencial de elector), a medical certificate, your marriage application, your birth certificate and your children's birth certificates if there are any.
In 2019, 86 couples were married ranging from the ages of 18 to 76 in Puerto Escondido Oaxaca. This was also the first year that same sex couples were allowed to marry although none did.[1]
The big winners of Bodas Colectivas are the children who get improved legal status.
Over 57% of Mexicans couples over the age of 15 who claim to live in a union do so without any legal union.[2] 28% of marriages between 2012 and 2017 ended in divorce.[3]
Photos taken by Marc Wilkinson. I, the copyright holder, hereby publish these photos under the following license: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0).
