ELAINE!!!i!!
I’ve had a couple of couples ask me to include it. I will, and then when no one speaks, I use it as a segue into a little speechifying about how the community might consider their role in this marriage, and how their support in times of trial and tribulation will help to strengthen the marriage, and how gossip and judgey-judginess can weaken it.
I don’t think publish it the bulletins anymore ( at least not everywhere)- but when they did, it wasn’t just in the parish where the wedding was to take place. The banns were published in every parish where the bride or groom had ever lived.
the point about making a call for any legal reason why they can’t be married is a good one, but fails to address the question whether, if you find out the next day that the groom is now a bigamist…you still have to speak up, no matter what the minister/priest/marrying-Sam said.
Really? I can imagine that someone here saw it happen once, but…‘a few times’???
I don’t think it would have been possible for the law or the church to ignore a case of bigamy. But if the legal problem with the marriage was that one of the parties was underage or there’d been some sort of procedural error relating to the banns or license then I’d guess that it would have been considered best to just let this go once the marriage had been performed.
Just speculating here, but this tradition dates back to a time when a woman known to have had pre-marital sex was considered seriously damaged goods. In the absence of other evidence it would have been polite to assume that an unmarried woman was a virgin, but the morning after her wedding a new bride would have been presumed to be a virgin no more…even if it turned out later that the wedding wasn’t legal to begin with. So if the marriage could be legally undone just by pointing out some bureaucratic error a day or more after the ceremony, the man could skip town and the woman’s life could be ruined.
Not being a virgin wouldn’t have been as big a deal for the not-quite-legally married man, but he would be vulnerable to blackmail if someone else had information that could void his marriage at any time. Ambiguity as to whether a marriage was really legal could also complicate the inheritance of titles and property by children born to this couple.
Have heard it often, though not of late, perhaps it’s finally gone the way of the dinosaurs?
What I always wanted to see, but never did, was, as the question is posed, for the bride to face the congregation, and, with finger to lips, make that conspiratorial, ‘Shhh!’ sound. I always thought that would be a good giggle!
It’s part of the service for Church of England marriages. In the Book of Common Prayer the wording is
and in the modern Common Worship it is
However, for non-CofE marriages the law does not require the audience to be asked; only the spouses have to declare that they are legally allowed to marry:
Where a couple are conducting a sham marriage for immigration purposes they are often busted during the actual ceremony by immigration officials. That way they can show them actually carrying out an illegal act rather than just planning one. Sometimes other conspirators, including the celebrant are caught up in the swoop. I’m not sure if they actually wait for the lawful impediment bit though.
It would have been great if EVERY person in the room had stood up and started talking at the same time!
And possibly things like the mother of the groom revealing that the father of the bride was also the father of the groom…
I wondered that too.
There’s a woman who posts on another board I frequent who is a domestic violence survivor, and claims that over the years, she’s had FOUR close friends murdered by their husbands. These are educated middle-class American women, too, and when it’s pointed out to her that this is not normal and indicates that she associates with people who have very serious issues WRT the men they choose to be with, the replying poster will get shot down. :smack: