Guest post from Professor Rebecca Probert, intended as the first in a series of blogs explaining the Law Commission’s provisional proposals for reforming weddings law.

On 3 September 2020, we published our consultation paper Getting Married: A Consultation Paper on Weddings Law. The full paper together with a shorter summary and further details about the project are available on our webpage here. In the consultation paper, we propose an entirely new scheme of weddings law. Our provisionally proposed scheme could be described as an officiant scheme, which would replace the current buildings-based approach. It would govern all weddings, including religious and civil wedding ceremonies (and, if permitted, weddings conducted by non-religious belief organisations and/or independent celebrants).

In this series of blogs, we highlight a number of elements of our scheme that we think will be of particular interest to readers of Law & Religion UK, beginning with the provisional proposals relating to the Anglican Church. Continue reading →