Celebrating weddings

Law Commission reforms would remove restrictions and support marriage

When the Prince of Wales decided to marry the future Duchess of Cornwall in 2005, plans were made for the wedding to take place at Windsor Castle. But it was not to be. The ceremony was switched to a local civic building after it was discovered that the castle was not licensed for weddings.

More alarmingly still, as a civil ceremony “solemnized in a registered building”, the wedding had to take place “with open doors”. It follows that any member of the public could have insisted on attending.

Windsor Guildhall, where the royal couple were married

It’s to address problems such as these that the Law Commission has recommended an entirely new legal foundation for weddings in England and Wales. If the government accepts the recommendations that its law reform advisers have published today, wedding law will be transformed from an 18th-century system based on the building where the wedding takes place to a new scheme linked to the person who is authorised to officiate at the ceremony.

Readers will recall that I summarised the commission’s provisional proposals in a column last Friday (and declared my interest as a non-executive Law Commission board member). How much has changed since the consultation was launched in 2020?