First, felicitations to Elendil’s Heir and his missus.
Second, same thing with the Episcopal Church in North Carolina, same calendar year. In fact, the priest mentioned the license as we were walking toward the chapel and upon hearing that I had neglectfully left it at the bed & breakfast, without breaking stride (he was walking backward in front of us at the time), he turned to my best man and said, with some urgency in his voice, “The second the ceremony is over, I will give you the nod. Run back to the bed & breakfast and get the license.” The non-optional nature of the license was certainly made clear.
I was under the impression that the state (generic, that is) delegated some of its authority to religious celebrants, so that when you got a religious wedding, it was automatically a civil wedding as well… but it was also possible to get a civil wedding with no religious organizations involved. Example: my sister’s first wedding was at a church, her second at City Hall. What I don’t know is whether her first wedding required a visit to City Hall as well.
It probably required a visit to City Hall (or county courthouse as was my experience) to get the license, but the religious celebrant was vested with the power (as the saying goes) to sign it and make it official.
Her first wedding required a trip to City Hall (or the County Clerk’s Office) to get the Marriage License Application. The Application is signed by the officiant at the church, usually after the ceremony. The officiant is responsible for mailing the signed Application back to City Hall within a prescribed number of days after the ceremony; generally 30 days. After that, the state will issue the Marriage Certificate and mail it to the persons who were married.
The officiant is also responsible for keeping a log of the people s/he performs weddings for, although I’ve never been asked for mine. I suppose it might get subpoenaed if there was some question as to the validity of the marriage, but that hasn’t come up in any of the marriages I’ve officiated.
The Catholic Church often does not recognize second marriages as religiously valid, even if they are civilly valid.
However, the process for getting an annullment can often take some time. If, while waiting for an annullment to go through, a person enters into a civil marriage - does the Catholic Church require or allow a second, religious ceremony to celebrate the second marriage once the annullment is confirmed?
The Episcopal Church in Texas doesn’t perform marriages without a civil license. Once you have a civil license issued by the county you give it to the priest. The license is good from three days of issuance for up to 30 days. It is a two part thing: apply for and obtain license, use license to get married by a state certified officiant (priest, minister, rabbi, Justice of the Peace). The officiant will sign the license after the ceremony making it official. Failure to do one of the two parts will prevent you from being legally married. Since Episcopal priests act as an arm of the State as well as the Church in this regard the church requires both parts be done. I imagine it is similar in other states.
I would be interested to know what other branches in the Anglican Communion do, particularly in other countries with differing marriage laws. There are a lot of Anglicans scattered throughout sub-Saharan Africa. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of those Dioceses will marry without a civil license, only because I imagine some African nations to have weird civil marriage laws.
If you get a church annulment of your first marriage then, in the eyes of the church, you were never married, and therefore you were at all times free to enter into your second marriage. You couldn’t do that in a church ceremony because you were mistakenly regarded as married already, so you married civilly. You don’t need a religious ceremony, but there is a canonical process of “convalidation” to confirm the second marriage. This can, if you wish, be associated with a ceremony which is not a marriage ceremony but can look a lot like one. But no ceremony is actually necessary for convalidation.
Marriage licences are, I think, a uniquely US institution. In some countries, assuming you’re not having a civil wedding, you get married in a church and then deal with the state afterwards, to register your marriage. (This would probably be the position in most ex-British Empire countries, where Anglicanism is mostly found.) In others, you have to have a civil ceremony as well as (if you wish) a religious ceremony. In still others, you have to give prior notice to the state that you are marrying in a church ceremony (and register it afterwards), but you don’t actually need the state’s licence to marry.
I went to a same-sex Quaker wedding in IL that could not be legal at the time. “wedding” and “marriage” were definitely used. In this case no third party (e.g. minister) does the marrying. They just say their vows, all in attendance sign a colossal document, and we the go to have punch and pie.
According to this if you want a relgious ceremony, other than in the Church of England, you still have to “give notice” to the local registrar in advance (& pay a fee). In the Church of England the vicar handles everything. I assume the register office gives you some kind of form to take to the clergy person verifying you’ve given notice. IIRC you also need to wait two weeks and have your name published in the local paper. In the CoE the vicar just reads formal banns of marriage on the 3 Sundays prior to the marriage in church.
Sure. But while it may play out quite similarly in practice, there is an important conceptual difference between giving the government (and wider community) notice that you are marrying and getting permission from the government to marry, which is what a licence is. In England the registrar issues you with a “certificate” stating that you have complied with the notice requirements and that no-one has objected to the marriage, but this is not expressed as a permission or licence to marry.
I bet you the “lawful” wording was used long before states got into the business of regulating marriages; canon marriage law predates secular marriage law by thousands of years.
Actually, the normative Catholic Rite of Marriage does not contain the “lawful husband . . . lawful wife” language. There’s a variation approved for use in the US which does contain this language but, even in the US, it’s just an option; it doesn’t have to be used.
I was a church secretary, Lutheran (LCMS), and our church required that the marriage license be obtained prior to the religious ceremony. This is in the US.
It’s been interesting to see how the various church denominations view all this.
I was married in the Roman Catholic Church. The priest who married us said that if he didn’t have the marriage license in his hands the night before, we weren’t going to be married by him, even if we had 300 guests in the church waiting to witness the nuptials. I assume that’s a general rule for the RCC, at least in the US.
It seems we have established that it is the general practice for mainstream clergy to require a civil license. I was hoping somebody would dig up denominational rules.
This. I don’t think that it is necessarily a hard and fast rule, but you’ve got some splainin’ to do if you can’t or won’t present one.
SSM comes to mind in this context. An Episcopalian Church would marry a same sex couple without a license in a state that doesn’t issue them because, well, you just can’t get one in that state.
Likewise, a strict Baptist church wouldn’t marry a same-sex couple even with a valid state license.
But, generally, I think that yes, if you have not taken the basic step of holding yourself out to the community and the authorities as wishing to be husband and wife, then you are missing an essential portion of Christian marriage required by the church.