Indeed. I know several older couples who got a religious wedding so that they could live together, but avoided a government wedding so they would still be single for federal tax purposes.
And the other way too: I know some younger couples, where one was a US citizen and the other not, who got their government wedding first, because it helped the immigration process.
Can, or are required to? In the US, licensed ministers can carry out legal marriages, but they are not required to. And in Spain we went from being required, to not being allowed to, to if your organization does the paperwork you can (“but we don’t have to, right? Right?” - meaning both that a religious officer will not have to record a marriage with the civil authorities if the spouses don’t want it, and that they are not required to perform at a ceremony that their own religious organization considers invalid).
My understanding that because the Church of England is a state church it’s clergy are required under common law to officiate at weddings as long as the bride or groom is a baptised resident of their parish and the marriage would be canonically valid. They can decline to officiate if either party has an ex-spouse still living. Other religious groups are free to set their own rules and when same-sex marriage was legalized in England & Wales were given the explicit right to op out of such unions (& the Church of England is explicitly forbidden from performing such unions w/o a future act of Parliament).
One of my parent’s friends had a religious only wedding to his second wife while the first one was still alive, but in a persistent vegetative state (& with the blessing of her parents). Apparently there’s an obscure provision in Jewish law allowing it.
Churches and “perform” any type of marriage they like, but the union has no legal standing unless a marriage license has been issued under the laws of the state. Marriage is a civil rite (and now a civil right for gays) and thus the state regulates it. Without the license, the ceremony is meaningless.
Well, that’s going to depend on the law of the jurisdiction concerned. There are lots of countries where it’s not necessary to get a civil marriage licence before celebrating a church wedding - you register the marriage with the state after it has been celebrated, but you don’t need to do anything beforehand. And there are other jurisdictions where churches are not free to celebrate wedding rituals that attract no legal recognition.
Legally meaningless. It can and does have a lot of meaning (religious, spiritual, emotional, community), which is why a couple would choose to have it even if it had no legal validity.
To me, when you talk about the meaning of a wedding ceremony, the legal implications are the last thing that come to mind. They are simply the consequences of the ceremony. The meaning is something else entirely.
Some “marriages” of legal interest: When one of the parties is underage or when the two parties are closely enough related that incest laws come into play. Then the person performing the marriage might be viewed as an accessory to a sex crime.
Can. Ministers in the C 0f E are pretty independant. They have to abide by the law, but can (and sometimes do) refuse to marry people.
Some time ago, it was made a requirement for at least one of the couple to have some attachment to the church the chose. This was done because couples were choosing the pretty country churches for their weddings even though they had no family or anything in the area. Some churches were booked up several years ahead.
He has retired now, but we did have a local vicar who wouldn’t marry a couple if one of them was divorced. I would not want to hear his opinion of same sex marriage.
In Colorado if a couple did that (with a few minor additions) they would actually be legally married.
In the U.S., the legal contract of marriage is distinct from the religious sacrament. The sacrament, if the cleric is registered with the jurisdiction, files the required paperwork, and the couple meet legal requirements (mentally competent, adults, no other marital contracts in place), can also form the legal contract. However, if the formation of a legal contract is not sought, the marriage can be anything the sect wishes.
In short, the hysterical slippery-slope arguments of paleo-conservatives are correct, you can marry an animal, a toaster, or a million people . . . and entirely irrelevant, since the animal will not be recognized as your spouse by the state, the toaster cannot get on your medical insurance, and those million people will not get spousal privilege if any are supoenaed.
I am a Humanist priest who has performed wedding ceremonies recognized by the state of Louisiana. However, I was perfectly willing to perform same-gender ceremonies before they were legally recognized and was working on creating a registry of same-gender couples on the theory that 1000 couples whose sect’s marriage was regarded as invalid by the state may have a stronger legal case of religious discrimination than 2000 gay folks protesting that they can’t get married.
Gladly, this was rendered unnecessary and much sooner than I had expected.