In a guest post, Professor Russell Sandberg looks at the ongoing Government consultation on wedding law reform
The Government Consultation on wedding law reform is currently open. As argued in my book and by the Law Commission, the Government is proposing a move from a law that largely regulates buildings to one that regulates officiants.
This is welcome and is badly needed because the law in England and Wales has not kept up to date with how people marry. It excludes many religious ceremonies that take place outside a registered place of worship as well as ceremonies conducted by belief organisations such as Humanists UK and independent celebrants.
The Consultation summarises the ‘two key features’ of the Law Commission’s proposals that ‘underpin’ the suggested reforms as follows:
“Firstly, a move away from a system based on the building in which a wedding takes place towards one focused on the officiant responsible for the ceremony. Secondly, the introduction of universal rules applying across different types of wedding (with the exception of Anglican weddings), reducing disparities between groups” [12]
The move to recognising officiants makes sense and would remove much of the discrimination, disadvantage and inconvenience caused by the current law.
The Law Commission said that it would be a political decision for Government whether to include humanist and independent celebrants. The decision in R (on the application of Harrison and others) v Secretary of State for Justice [2020] EWHC 2096 (Admin) that the current lack of recognition of humanist marriage is not compatible with human rights has settled the issue in terms of the inclusion of humanist celebrants.
The Government is consulting on the question of whether independent celebrants should be included but the consultation has taken the initial view that independent officiants should be permitted to conduct legally binding weddings. This is to be welcomed. As I have argued in article for Family Law, the reform objectives will only be met if independent celebrants are included. It is great to see the Government accept and argue for this – and this should be supported.
The Consultation raises the issue of interfaith weddings as a clear catalyst for reform. It notes:
“Couples with different religious affiliations or couples where one partner has no religion, estimated at 21% of relationships, may also face challenges in having a wedding that accommodates their beliefs. A key driver of these issues is that the current law regulates weddings primarily by the building in which they take place, rather than the person conducting the ceremony” [22].
This is an important argument for the inclusion of independent celebrants who can conduct such ceremonies. Merely modernising the law to include belief organisations would not accommodate this group. This underscores the need for comprehensive reform that includes independent celebrants, as the Consultation rightly proposes.
The Consultation builds upon the work of the Law Commission in most respects. However, unlike the Law Commission who suggested central regulation of independent celebrants, the Government proposes that ‘independent officiants would be required to belong to a recognised, regulator-approved membership organisation similar to the approach proposed for belief groups’ [77]. This is in line with my suggestions to the Law Commission and, as I have argued previously, is a much better approach since it means that the central regulator can play the same role in relation to all officiants and can serve as the regulator of their regulators.
The Consultation proposes a structured dignity framework placing a legal responsibility on officiants to ensure that locations and ceremonies are safe, dignified and uphold the significance of marriage. The Consultation seeks views on whether existing wedding venues should be able to apply for voluntary pre-authorisation. This makes sense, meaning that the Dignity Framework only really applies to new venues and places.
The Consultation as a whole is an accessible, thoughtful and concise guide to be proposed reforms that would make a significant difference. Space does not permit the detailed discussion of all aspects of the reform. This post focuses on five particular areas where it is suggested that the proposals can be strengthened further. These are little more than tweaks given the worth of the proposals overall.
[1] List rather than classify officiants
The Consultation’s glossary defines ‘officiant’ as ‘a person who is legally responsible for ensuring that a wedding complies with the law and who oversees the legal formation of the marriage. This includes registration officers, Anglican clergy, nominated officiants, independent officiants and maritime officiants’ [9].
This list approach is unproblematic and should be adopted throughout. However, unfortunately this is not the case and this complicates matters considerably. The Glossary unhelpfully makes further distinctions. It adopts a distinction drawn by the Law Commission between: ‘“Belief officiants”: Anglican clergy and nominated officiants from religious or non-religious belief organisations’ and ‘“Civil officiants”: The person who would be legally responsible for ensuring that a civil wedding complies with the law and who oversees the legal formation of the marriage, under proposed reforms. This includes registration officers, independent officiants and maritime officiants’[6].
I have been critical of this distinction and the Law Commission’s differential treatment of independent celebrants that flowed from them being treated as being under the ‘civil’ category. This makes little sense given that they have more in common with humanist celebrants than registration officers.
This is underlined by the definition given of an ‘independent officiant’, which is what legally recognised independent celebrants would become. These are defined as officiants ‘that will be neither state appointed registration officers, nor officiants acting on behalf of a religious or non-religious belief organisation, under the proposed reforms’[8]. This underscores that the distinction between civil and belief officiants is unhelpful since independent officiants can be distinguished from bedfellows in each category.
The ‘belief-civil’ distinction can be confusing given that the main distinctions envisaged in the Consultation are not between belief and civil officiants. For the most part, all officiants are treated the same. Under the Consultation, the only significant dividing lines are types of officiants is between State officials and all others in terms of regulation and, between Anglican weddings and all other weddings in terms of universal rules as to preliminaries etc. (There are some proposed differences but I will argue below that they should not apply)
The term ‘civil’ has two different meanings in the Consultation. For the most part, it refers to officiants other than Anglican clergy and nominated officiants. However, ‘civil preliminaries are defined as those that apply to ‘all non-Anglican weddings’ [7]. This means that Catholic and Humanist weddings, for example, would be conducted by ‘belief officiants’ but undergo ‘civil preliminaries’. This will lead to confusion.
It is true that in common parlance, there is understood to be a distinction between civil and religious weddings. However, this distinction is not found in the Marriage Act 1949 which adopts the list approach (see section 26). It was originally reflected in the civil partnership legislation but civil partnerships can now be conducted by religious officiants.
The preferable approach is not to distinguish between ‘belief’ and ‘civil’ officiants but to simply include the list of officiants as in the definition given of officiants. The ‘civil’ label can then be kept for the discussion of preliminaries where it denotes anything non-Anglican.
Many of the proposals in the Consultation would be even clearer if the discussion was organised around the five categories of officiant (registration officers, Anglican clergy, nominated officiants, independent officiants and maritime officiants) rather than using broader categories that conflate officiants and have little meaning in terms of the few differences in treatment of officiants that is being proposed.
The Consultation document is a master class in communicating complex information clearly and sweeping away unhelpful distinctions. The inclusion of definitions for and therefore a distinction between civil and belief officiants is a rare blip and needs to be removed
[2] Rules on consent need recasting
The consultation proposes that in ‘religious and non-religious belief ceremonies’, ‘consent should be capable of being expressed through actions as well as words’ and that this would better reflect the diversity of traditions and practices used in wedding ceremonies’ [33].
Given the important role they play in terms of interfaith marriages, it may be argued that this rule should also apply to independent officiants.
The Consultation argues that ‘civil ceremonies should continue to have a clear, standardised and identifiable expression of consent’ that ‘required words of consent should be used in civil ceremonies as the means by which consent can be expressed, but that these words should be limited to the core elements of the commitment of marriage’ [33-34] . It is proposed that ‘the required words should take the form of a short statement of contract, such as: “I [name] accept you [name] as my [husband / wife / spouse]”’ and that ‘limited variation should be permitted through the use of “words to the same effect” [34].
This protects the state’s interests in ensuring that both parties have freely agreed to marry and provides certainty in law for civil ceremonies ‘where there are no established non-verbal practices and traditions for expressing consent’[33].
This is true for registration officers but it is difficult to see why this should apply to independent officiants.
The Consultation paper states that the Government believes that these different rules are justified: ‘It would accommodate different belief practices, while improving consistency and legal clarity in all marriage ceremonies’. Yet, Independent Celebrants are placed on the wrong side of this line.
Indeed, it would be preferable to get rid of the line altogether and having the same rule across the board: suggested words of consent with limited variation that could include action. The discussion of consent underscores the problem with the ‘belief-civil’ distinction and provides further reason for disregarding it. Should different rule be necessary, it would be clearer to distinguish officiants by type using the five-fold list.
[3] Clarifying the use of religious or belief materials
The Consultation also differs from the Law Commission’s proposals in terms of the use of religious or belief content in ceremonies other than religion or belief organisations.
The Consultation distinguishes ‘between a full belief service, which should not be permitted and individual elements of belief content, which may be [46]. This can be understood as allowing individual “ingredients”, but not the full “recipe”, or a combination of elements that, taken together, would amount to a recognisable religious or non-religious belief service’. The Consultation proposes that at a civil wedding, it would be matter for the ‘discretion of the officiant, who will be responsible for ensuring that the ceremony remains clearly identifiable as civil and does not amount to a recognisable belief service’.
The Consultation further proposes that ‘registrars should not lead or participate in religious or non-religious belief elements in a civil ceremony. Couples would still be able to include permitted belief elements, provided they are led by the couple, a guest or a third party [47].
This seems to be a sensible solution but one that is confused by reference to the word ‘civil’ rather than just listing the officiant. The Consultation proposes a general rule for civil ceremonies but then makes it clear that this does not apply to registrar ceremonies. It would be much clearer to say that the general rule applies to independent and maritime officiants with the second rule applying to registrars.
Yet again, the ‘civil-belief’ distinction is unhelpful because the same rules should not apply to independent and maritime officiants as to registrars. Classifying both as ‘civil’ causes more problems.
[4] Rethink the purpose of defining religion or belief
The Consultation ties itself in knots attempting to define ‘religious belief organisations’ and then ‘non-religious belief organisations’ [61]. A lot of this rests upon the rather naïve belief that there is a robust and clear definition of the term ‘belief’ under the Article 9 case law. The Consultation even relies upon the ‘Grainger’ criteria under the Equality Act 2010’ [61-62], completely ignoring the extraordinary contradictory and confused case law that those criteria have led to. There is then a detailed discussion of the number of households that would need to belong to a ‘religion or belief’ for that religion or belief to be recognised.
All this is utterly unconvincing and also misses the point. The question is whether the nominating body is able to serve effectively as a regulator for the purposes of marriage law. Under the proposals, celebrancy organisations will perform similar nominating and regulatory functions for independent officiants as religion or belief organisations will play for officiants representing them. Yet, no attention is afforded (rightly) to the question of how a celebrancy organisation is defined; the focus is rather on whether it is able to serve effectively as a regulator.
If nominating officials are to be limited to belief organisations’ and then ‘non-religious belief organisations’ then all that is needed is the rule suggested by the Law Commission that such ‘organisations should only be eligible to nominate officiants where “it would be a manifestation of an individual’s religion or beliefs to have a wedding officiated at by an officiant nominated by that organisation”’ [62].
This could be buttressed by excluding certain types of organisations such as political parties and trade unions from the definition, an approach taken in other jurisdictions that the Law Commission rejected but that the Consultation now raises [65]. This seems a sensible addition.
Chapter seven of the Consultation deals with the Regulation of Officiants and explores many suggested requirements, some of which are only to apply to independent and maritime officiants. Most of the time, however, it would make sense for these to apply to all officiants including those nominated by religion or belief bodies.
In particular, question 36 consults on the eligibility criteria ‘that would be necessary for membership organisations to become approved, both in relation to the organisation’s structure and to how it appoints and oversees officiants’. It would make sense for these to apply not only to celebrancy organisations but to all nominating bodies – including religion or belief bodies. This, again, undermines the use of the ‘belief-civil’ distinction.
[5] Some thoughts on disturbances
A major, if not the major, innovation by the Consultation is the suggestion of a dignity framework that would enable officiants to determine whether locations and ceremonies are safe and dignified. There is a lot of detail on this, despite the intention being that it should enable ‘discretion in order to reflect the particular circumstances of each wedding’ [37].
One aspect that I found questionable is the suggestion that officiants should be clear that the ‘dignity of the occasion will not be undermined by distraction or trivialisation’[38]. These are very subjective terms. The reference to ‘distraction’ is particularly problematic; a distraction for whom? In a religious wedding, the religious rituals could be seen as a distraction from the main event of the wedding in some eyes. It is stated that:
‘Locations characterised by unavoidable interruption or distraction, such as nightclubs during normal operation or stadiums during live sporting events, will not meet the proposed standard. Settings that require participants to focus on another activity during the ceremony, such as skydiving, white-water rafting, rollercoasters or other amusement rides, will also fall short of the standard’ [41]
However, how does his differ from religious or cultural weddings where there are other traditions ongoing? The idea that a closed nightclub or sports arena might be a suitable venue but an open one would not goes against the ‘public’ nature of marriage.
It later suggests a number of factors to be taken into account including ‘Control of the environment: whether the officiant is able to maintain appropriate control over the immediate environment, including preventing interruptions or distractions during the ceremony’ [42].
This would seemingly allow other focuses provided that they can be policed. This may be a preferable approach to banning distractions or other focuses.
Indeed, the Consultation stresses that this is not ‘intended to exclude all non-traditional locations. For example, a tethered hot-air balloon or a busy public beach may require careful consideration but could be permitted provided the officiant is satisfied that the ceremony can be conducted safely, seriously and without avoidable distraction’ [41].
The other thing missing from the Consultation’s discussion of this is the proximity of the other event from the ‘legal’ part of the ceremony, the expression of consent. Surely, this makes a huge difference. This is why a communion service during the wedding ceremony is fine – the religious ritual does not disturb the legal part of the ceremony since the two are not at the same time. The same logic would apply to non-religious activities.
Somewhat bafflingly, the Consultation gives the following example:”
‘if a couple wanted the ceremony to be performed as a parody or comedic sketch, with the expression of consent treated as part of the performance, this would not meet the proposed standard. In those circumstances, the ceremony would not reflect the seriousness required for the legal act of marriage” [42].
Surely, the issue would be whether the sketch was the legal part of the ceremony. How different would be a recitation of a comedy routine to any other reading? It would be fine as part of the ceremony provided it is not the expression of consent.
This is the nub of the issue. It needs to be made clearer that interpreting and applying the Dignity Framework, attention is to be afforded to the proximity of the potentially undignified matter with the legal expression of consent.
These five suggestions are mere tweaks. Most of them result from the rejection of the ‘civil-belief’ distinction. The vast majority of the proposals are to be welcome as they stand and represent an improvement on the Law Commission’s already stellar work. Clarity and fairness would, however, be achieved by using the five-fold list of types of officiant throughout and this would be particularly true if legislation is enacted following the Consultation, which it hopefully will be given the importance of this reform and the general brilliance of this Consultation document.
Russell Sandberg
Cite this article as: Russell Sandberg, “Five suggestions on wedding law reform” in Law & Religion UK, 6 September 2026,