What makes you legally married? Like on TV you see a couple get married and then the justice of the peace forgot to renew his license or the priest turned out to be a fake. On TV of course you’re not married but I’d doubt it works that way in real life.
But what about if you got a priest to marry you and didn’t have a license. I am assuming you’re not really married.
By REALLY married I’m talking in the eyes of the law, not God or religion.
Let’s say you have a ceremony and the minister marries you, you say “I do,” and then the groom says “I’m not signing that marriage license,” so are you married?
What if two people sign the license and no one will witness it?
I suppose it would vary in some cases or be up to a judge to determain in others.
Welcome to the Straight Dope. That’s a real interesting question.
I suspect it depends on the state. In Pennsylvania you can marry yourself. (Um, that didn’t come out quite right. ) We had someone marry us, but I think us signing the license with a witness would have been good enough. So my follow on question is - is it official during the ceremony, or after the signature? If the officiant signs before the ceremony, say the day before, and the groom dashes, are they still married. Insert improbable scenario with one of the couple getting shot somewhere in the process here.
I always thought it was after both spouses had said, ‘I do’, but Napier’s idea makes a lot more sense.
Although, aren’t there religions where there is no officiant in a marriage ceremony, and the spouses just do it on their own? In that case, presumably the marriage is recognised by the State when someone fills out some paperwork.
It depends on the state. My wife and I got married at her parent’s farm in New Hampshire. After the reception died down, we realized that we never had any witnesses or paperwork at all. A few frantic calls to the minister (that we didn’t know that well) revealed that we didn’t need any paperwork in New Hampshire and we were married any time after the marriage license was granted and we were satisfied by any type of ceremony we had (that didn’t need to be verified). Most other states have some type of paperwork requirements.
As a former wedding reception DJ I always gave a benediction after a certain dance and then declared - “Because You’re not Officially Married Until They Play the Hokey Pokey!”
When you are legally married, unsurprisingly, depends entirely on the local law.
In most countries whose marriage laws reflect originally Christian ideas of marriage, the essential element in the exchange of vows in the presence of witnesses. On this view, the celebrant is not marrying the couple when he says “I now pronounce you man and wife”; he is recognizing the fact that they have just married each other.
However some jurisdictions will have codified their marriage laws, and may prescribe a formal ritual to be followed. In that case the ritual must be completed for the marriage to be effected. If the prescribed ritual includes the celebrant saying “I now pronounce you . . .” then he has to say it. It is possible that some jurisdictions may even require the completion of a written document before the marriage is effective.
Still other jurisdictions will defer to the rites and customs of different religious communities. The state recognises as valid marriages performed according to the rites and ceremonies of Jewish congregations, Christian churches, etc, or recognises them as valid provided the celebrant is also registered for civil purposes. Whether any particular ritual does or does not constitute a valid marriage will then depend on the view of the particular religious community, and it may be that for group A the declaration of the celebrant is constitutive of the marriage, while for group B it merely recognises the marriage. The law will of course have to be more prescriptive with respect to civil marriage ceremonies.
As others have said, it depends on state law. In New York, it is governed by Article 3 of the Domestic Relations Law (DRL).
Section 11 identifies who may perform (solemnize) marriages, including a “clergyman or minister of any religion”, and mayors, judges and other specified civil official. Section 13 provides that all persons to be married must obtain a marriage license from a town or city clerk and provide it to the clergyman or civil official (magistrate) before the marriage ceremony is to be performed. Section 12 provides for how the marriage may be solemnized as follows:
§ 12. Marriage, how solemnized. No particular form or ceremony is required when a marriage is solemnized as herein provided by a clergyman or magistrate, but the parties must solemnly declare in the presence of a clergyman or magistrate and the attending witness or witnesses that they take each other as husband and wife. In every case, at least one witness beside the clergyman or magistrate must be present at the ceremony.
The preceding provisions of this chapter, so far as they relate to the manner of solemnizing marriages, shall not affect marriages among the people called friends or quakers; nor marriages among the people of any other denominations having as such any particular mode of solemnizing marriages; but such marriages must be solemnized in the manner heretofore used and practiced in their respective societies or denominations, and marriages so solemnized shall be as valid as if this article had not been enacted.
In other words, in New York you are married when, after getting a license, you go before a clergy member or authorized civil official and a witness and declare that you and your spouse take each other as spouses, or if you are married in a religious denomination, when you are married under the practices of that denomination. (The Quaker exception is because Quakers do not have clergy.)
A nitpick: The bride and groom both sign the marriage license when they obtain it, which is usually well before the marriage actually takes place. The only people to sign the license on the occasion of the ceremony are the officiant and the witnesses. At least, that’s how it is in California.
And it’s officiant only in Illinois, no witnesses or participants. The signed license must then be sent into the state within a certain number of days of issuance (30, I think?) and the state does its paperwork thing and sends out a marriage certificate. There are three dates listed on the Certification of Marriage: “Date of Marriage” which is the date the officiant wrote down when s/he signed the marriage license, “Date Recorded” which is when the County Clerk’s office put the paperwork through, and “Application Date” which is when you applied for the license (and must be at least 24 hours before the “Date of Marriage” date.)
(The preceding is accurate at least as of August 25, 2000. I’m looking at my marriage cert for the proper wording.)
Nope. If you never send in the marriage license signed by an officiant, then you’re not married. The license is permission to marry, not promise to marry. Again, I can only speak to Illinois here.
Confirming what WhyNot said, it’s the same in California. You’re wed when the officiant says that you’re wed, but to be legal he/she has to sign the license and it has to be mailed back to the county so it can be recorded.
There are some exceptions; my sister had looked into getting married at the Baha’i Temple in Wilmette, and was informed that if she wanted to do so, she had to abide by Baha’i mariage rules, one of which is “no officiant.” Same goes for Quakers, I believe (as in, I understand from a friend who is an observant Quaker). As for who signs the marriage license in this circumstance, I have no idea.
A bit different in Australia. You apply for the thing somehow (I forget what we did now), and once the paperwork goes through, you have to wait one month and one day before you can get married. The actual marriage certificate was signed by my wife and I, the celebrant, and a coupla witnesses, but it was definitely part of the actual ceremony (non-religious), and involved lots of camera flashes, teary mothers, etc.
I got married in Cambodia. The wedding lasted 3 days. I got about 4 hours sleep. There did not seem to be an official point where we were married. There were lots of little ceremonies.
I suppose legally was after the paperwork was officially done.
Again, laws will vary from place to place, but in many places the paperwork, even though completed at the church, etc, is not what constitutes the marriage. What constitutes the marriage is the exchange of vows in the presence of the required witnesses. Once you have done that, you are married. If you don’t complete and return the paperwork you have committed the offence of failing to register a marriage but, strictly speaking, you are married. You may have difficulty proving it, though.
Odd; I was hanging out with some friends earlier tonight and one of them threw out a bit of knowledge on this exact question (as it applies to Washington State), which I just looked up: If your officiant is bogus but you believed him or her to be genuine at the time of the ceremony, then it’s still a valid marraige. So technically, you don’t even need a legitimate officiant; you just need to think you’ve got one. cite
Cecil mentions this in the column kunilou links to, but I’d call that column a little terse, as he’s either completely disregarding the fact that the law varies from place to place, or he’s only answering for Chicago.
An interesting detail in the Washington code: only one of the people getting married has to believe in the legitimacy of the officiant. The other one can be totally in on the scam.
) We had someone marry us, but I think us signing the license with a witness would have been good enough. So my follow on question is - is it official during the ceremony, or after the signature? If the officiant signs before the ceremony, say the day before, and the groom dashes, are they still married. Insert improbable scenario with one of the couple getting shot somewhere in the process here.