Matrimony is just a fancy way of saying “marriage.” When a couple ties the knot, they are engaging in matrimony.

You can describe the actual wedding celebration as matrimony, and also the state of being married, although it’s a formal word most often used in documents and in the words of the ceremony. The Latin word for matrimony is matrimonium, which comes from combining mater, “mother,” with the suffix monium, “action or condition The term highlights the extent to which reproduction and childrearing are central to marriage itself. As the Code of Canon Law notes (Canon 1055), “The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life, is by its nature ordered toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring.”