‘Legal Marriage is Paperwork Day’: Independent Celebrant-Led Wedding Ceremonies as a Critical Institutional Response to Changing Social Norms

Abstract

Informed by a critical institutional perspective, in this article attention is turned to the choice to have an independent celebrant-led wedding ceremony in England or Wales. As these ceremonies fall outside the current legal framework, it explores how the decision to have a further wedding ceremony in addition to a legally binding wedding may indicate a weakening of legal marriage norms. Triangulating data collected from three focus groups attended by 19 celebrants, with seven semi-structured interviews with individuals who have had an independent celebrant-led wedding ceremony, two key themes are described. First, a mismatch between legal norms which expect marrying couples to take a passive detached role and an expressed desire for ceremonial autonomy including familiarity with the marriage celebrant. Second, a lack of awareness of what legal marriage involves and perceptions of legal formalities as akin to an administrative process which may be easing their separation from ceremonial rites perceived to be meaningful. Further studies with larger samples are needed to determine the extent to which personal and communal validity rather than legal validity constitutes the social institutional form of marriage.

Keywords

marriage wedding social norms legal norms individualisation critical institutionalism celebrancy detraditionalism bricolage

Introduction

From the 19th century, couples in England and Wales looking to get married have had the option of a religious wedding in a registered place of worship or a non-religious civil wedding led by a state-appointed registrar. A wedding ceremony only leads to a legally binding marriage if it complies with the requirements of the Marriage Act 1949. These requirements include a verbal declaration of no legal impediment to marriage and contracting words made publicly in front of witnesses and an individual authorised to ensure that the marriage is registered. Yet couples may have an additional non-legally binding wedding ceremony which they typically see as marking the point at which they are married (Probert et al., 2022a). To date, attention to this phenomenon of ‘getting married twice’ has largely focused on the inadequacy of marriage law for couples who are seeking a religious or belief wedding (Parveen, 2020; Probert et al., 2015). The lack of registered places of worship or option for non-religious belief organisations to register a venue for weddings, as well as exemptions for religious authorities to refuse to marry same-sex couples, can all contribute to additional wedding ceremonies being held outside of the legal framework. In this paper, attention is turned to additional wedding ceremonies led by an independent celebrant and what decisions to have this form of wedding ceremony can tell us about the fit of social norms with current marriage law.

An independent celebrant-led wedding ceremony is a bespoke personalised event designed collaboratively between the couple and the celebrant. Independent celebrants are not affiliated with a religious, belief, or government organisation. They usually work as sole traders but will often be a member of a professional network which provides accredited celebrant training. Wedding ceremonies led by independent celebrants are not legally binding in England and Wales but are recognised as a form of civil wedding in Australia, New Zealand and the Channel Islands. Pywell (2020) estimated that the number of independent celebrant-led wedding ceremonies being held each year in England and Wales may have more than doubled from four thousand in 2015 to nine and a half thousand in 2019. From a survey with celebrants, she suggests that this demand indicates an unmet need for further choice for couples rather than a rejection of legal marriage.

In this paper, the interplay between independent celebrant-led wedding ceremonies and legally binding weddings is examined. Guided by a critical institutional perspective, it will be suggested that while couples are not explicitly rejecting legal marriage, their actions in having an additional bespoke ceremony, and ambiguity of the meaning of having a legally binding wedding may indicate a move in that direction. As the Law Commission (2022) has recently set out proposed recommendations for revising marriage law in England and Wales, it is hoped that this paper makes a timely contribution to further debates as to the place of independent celebrant-led wedding ceremonies within or outside the legal framework and the contemporary values which may be important to reflect in the options for legally binding weddings.

Throughout the paper, marriage is discussed as a social institution – that is a relatively enduring practice with norms which structure actors’ behaviour that cannot be easily changed (Mahoney and Thelen, 2009). While it is recognised that there can be overlaps, in this work, a distinction is drawn between social norms as majority consensus informal rules which guide human behaviour and legal norms set out in legislation as formal rules to follow to be married. This reflects the work of Gross (2005) who proposed a distinction between meaning-constitutive and regulative traditions when examining the extent of detraditionalisation. Weddings are included as part of the social institution of marriage to reflect their position as the gateway to marriage and a belief that analysis of how couples are marrying can inform understanding of potential changes at an institutional level. First, the theoretical context and concepts which have informed this work are briefly set out, before describing the study on which this paper is based.

Changing Social Norms

The range of options for getting married in England and Wales remains substantially the same as when the Marriage Act 1836 was enacted. At that time, marriage was the foundation for most adult cohabiting sexual relationships and having a religious wedding was the social and legal norm. Now a majority consensus accepts nonmarital sex and cohabitation, with weddings often acting as a capstone event for already committed relationships; as shown through the increased average age of marriage from the early 20s in the mid-1970s to early 30s in 2019 (ONS, 2019). Reflecting the limitations of current marriage laws (Probert et al., 2022a), as well as a growing population who identify as non-religious, four out of five weddings now have a civil rather than religious form (ONS, 2022). These changes have been theorised to reflect wider cultural shifts towards individualism, wherein through increased globalisation and capitalist markets, beliefs have diversified, and values such as freedom of choice and individual expression are emphasised (Beck and Beck-Gersheim, 1995; Giddens, 1992).

For decades, scholars have debated the impact changing social norms have had on the institution of marriage. Some have focused on the extent to which marriage decisions are self-determined through reflexivity rather than exogenously determined by institutional precepts such as law (Cherlin, 2020). Such an approach typically perceives the institution of marriage as having a fixed character from which it is possible to measure how it continues to exist. Contrarily, with perceptions of marriage as an intrinsically ambiguous institution which is dynamic to adapt to change, others have criticised what is thought to be an over-estimation of individual autonomy and focused on exploring how marriage may be contingently characterised in specific contexts (Smart, 2007).

In prior collaborative work undertaken by the author which explored the design of independent celebrant-led wedding ceremonies from the same collected data as reported herein, we described how these ceremonies can meet the needs of individuals and contemporary relationship forms in a way that couples whose needs fit with existing legally binding wedding options, may take for granted (Blake et al., 2023). As per Pywell (2020), couples choosing independent celebrant-led wedding ceremonies were looking for a ceremony which went beyond a stark choice between a religious or nonreligious wedding. Through a sense-making process guided by a celebrant, couples sought to determine for themselves what is important in each partner's lived experience to acknowledge and display in their wedding ceremony. In addition to religious or spiritual beliefs, ceremonial elements were included to reflect heritage, kin, vocation, personal values (such as feminism or anti-consumerism) and interests (such as a love of Elvis music), as well as nostalgia for significant memories and the couple's perception of a future life together (Blake et al., 2023).

The wide range of individual markers in independent celebrant-led wedding ceremonies better met the needs of individuals for whom religious identity is not prioritised over other contexts of identification. Blended families and couples who already had a long-standing relationship at the time they married were able to display their shared history and family unification through personalised rituals (see also Baker and Elizabeth, 2014). Couples in interfaith or mixed heritage relationships could design an independent celebrant-led wedding ceremony which reflected both partner's beliefs and backgrounds rather than choose one form of religious wedding or compromise to have a non-religious civil ceremony. Yet, instead of creating an entirely bespoke ceremony, the independent celebrant-led wedding ceremonies described were isomorphic. Ceremonial elements to reflect individual markers identified as important were tweaked or translated from traditional wedding rituals or innovated to sit alongside traditions such as walking down an aisle, making vows and exchanging rings (Blake et al., 2023). The similar structure of these ceremonies and continued inclusion and adaption from wedding traditions suggests an enduring normative framework guiding expectations and behaviour as to what getting married involves, albeit with a flexibility to adapt to changing social norms.

Critical Institutionalism

A critical institutional perspective focuses on how institutions are entwined in everyday life and mediate relationships between people and resources (Cleaver and De Koning, 2015). In line with the above finding, critical institutionalism recognises that institutions can be in part fixed and in part dynamic (Mahoney and Thelen, 2009). A key concept of this perspective is bricolage, which has been developed to explain how institutions gradually change through the active assembly of institutional elements by actors who consciously question some elements, yet unconsciously accept others, so that the institution continues to act as a legitimising symbol of socially embedded practices (Cleaver and De Koning, 2015). Expanding the work of Carter and Duncan (2018), in our earlier work, we proposed that individuals choosing an independent celebrant-led wedding ceremony, along with their celebrant, were acting as bricoleurs by consciously and unconsciously assembling their ceremony from wedding traditions to better fit their needs (Blake et al., 2023).

An essential component of bricolage is the continued recognition of imbued symbolic meanings, and it was important to those having this form of wedding ceremony that their guests accepted it as a ‘real wedding’ (see also Mamali and Stevens, 2020). A critical institutional perspective views individuals as highly relational with action shaped by group memberships (Cleaver and De Koning, 2015; Roseneil and Ketokivi, 2016). In keeping with this, couples carefully designed their bespoke ceremony to display what was personally important to them without moving too far from an accepted structure for a wedding, so that loved ones and peers would recognise it as a couple ‘getting married’. At an institutional level, the incremental expansion of normative expectations for getting married through tweaking traditions in a bricolage process means that the institution of marriage can continue to act as a legitimising symbol for a greater diversity of relationship forms and individual needs. But, as these ceremonies are held outside of the legal framework, where do legal norms fit in these normative expectations for getting married?

In line with theories of critical legal pluralism (Kleinhans and Macdonald, 1997), and legal consciousness (Ewick and Silbey, 1998) a critical institutional perspective draws attention to the interaction between state and non-state systems. In particular, it recognises how institutions can unequally distribute resources to actors and focuses attention on how power may be exercised outside of formal institutions to create embedded implicit rules which can over time subvert legal norms (Cleaver and De Koning, 2015). Guided by this perspective, the further analysis reported in this paper aims to explore what decisions to have an independent celebrant-led wedding ceremony can tell us about the role of legal norms in normative expectations for getting married.

Change in Legal Marriage Norms

To help explore the role of legal norms, a conceptual model proposed by Robbins et al. (2022) to measure change in norms is applied to the findings of this qualitative study. Drawing on literature which suggests a norm can be weak or strong for a given individual along four dimensions, Robbins et al. (2022) set out a template which involves measuring the extent of:

polarity (whether a norm is prescriptive (uniformly endorsed), proscriptive (uniformly opposed), bipolar (opposed and endorsed) or non-existent (neither opposed nor endorsed as no rule exists)).

conditionality (whether a norm holds under all or some circumstances).

intensity (the degree of subscription to a norm).

consensus (sharing of norm within population and sub-populations).

Theoretically according to this model, a norm would be strong if it was viewed as uniformly prescriptive or proscriptive, without conditional circumstances under which the norm applies, but with intense individual approval and widespread consensus. Whereas a norm would be weak if some people approve, while others disapprove, or believe there are not any rules guiding such behaviour, and the strength of feeling is mild, with little consensus and varied circumstances as to when the norm applies.

The multidimensional nature of the model means that in addition to direction of change, it is possible to separate out what part of a norm may be changing and the degree of that change. Indeed, when Robbins et al. (2022) applied this conceptual model in a US based study to explore the strength of the norm to marry for different-sex couples, they also looked at the circumstances which individuals perceive as demarcating the norm. While they focused on economic (education, employment, earnings) and relationship (quality, pregnancy status) conditions, they advocated a need to map the specific circumstances which account for conditionality. As an in-depth yet small qualitative study, it was not possible to measure the extent of change. However, the concepts of this model are drawn upon to inform discussion of the study findings as to what decisions to have an additional wedding ceremony outside of the regulatory framework may suggest in respect of changes in the role of legal norms for getting married.

The Study

The data drawn upon for this secondary analysis was collected as part of a wider qualitative study exploring non-legally binding wedding ceremonies in England and Wales for which ethics were approved via internal university committee in 2020 (Probert et al., 2022a). Participants were recruited through independent celebrant networks and snowball sampling. Written consent was sought and checked verbally prior to participation. Seven semi-structured interviews with individuals who had an independent celebrant-led wedding ceremony between 2010 and 2020 and three focus groups with 19 independent celebrants were held online via Zoom. The celebrants worked across England and Wales and had varying amounts of experience; see Table 1. The individuals who had an independent celebrant-led wedding ceremony all cohabited with their partner prior to marriage and six had a legally binding wedding prior to their independent celebrant-led wedding ceremony, while one had a civil ceremony afterwards; see Table 2.

Table 1.

Sample Characteristics Of Participating Independent Wedding Celebrants.

Focus group	Celebrant pseudonym	Sex	Age	Ethnicity	Beliefs	Years working as a celebrant	Region worked in
1	Lakshmi	F	52	Indian	Hindu	1	Southeast & Midlands
	Bethany^a	F	58	White British	Church of England	6	Southwest
	Deborah^a	F	63	British	Christian	3	Midlands & Southwest
	Ruth	F	55	White British	Church of England	6	Southeast
	Tashi^a	F	55	White Welsh	Buddhist	4	UK wide
	Emily^a	F	61	British	Roman Catholic	6	UK wide
	Anya	F	61	British	Serbian Orthodox	3	Midlands & Northeast
	Zara	F	65	White English	Christian	1	UK wide
2	Jan	F	50	White British	None	8	UK wide
	Laura	F	60	White British	None	6	UK wide
	Christine	F	64	White British	None	4	Southwest
	Rob	M	30	White	Atheist	1	UK wide
	Mel	F	59	White British	None	2	Midlands & Southwest
	Kate	F	41	British	Non-practising Christian	16	Southwest & Southeast
	Sue	F	60	White British	None	2	UK wide
	Heather	F	54	White British	Non practising Christian	1	Southwest & Southeast
3	Jacob	M	58	British	Jewish	4	UK wide
	Carla	F	54	White British	None	2	England
	Kester	M	58	British Caucasian	Atheist/Pagan	34	UK wide

Ethnicity and Belief definitions used are as provided by participants.

Celebrant has previously worked as a Registrar.

Table 2.

Sample Characteristics of Participating Individuals who had an Independent Celebrant-led Wedding Ceremony.

Individual pseudonym	Age	Sex	Employment	Ethnicity	Beliefs	Martial history	Children at home
Chloe	25	F	Professional	White British	Atheist	1^st Marriage	No
Amanda	38	F	Administrative	White British	None	2^nd Marriage	Yes
Lucy	58	F	Semi-skilled	White British	None	2^nd Marriage	Grown-up
Karen	61	F	Professional	White European	Christian	2^nd Marriage	Grown-up
Vicky	44	F	Professional	White British	Agnostic	1^st Marriage^a	Yes
Mairead	30	F	Professional	White Irish	Agnostic	1^st Marriage	No
Sita	37	F	Professional	British Hindu	Hindu	1^st Marriage	Yes

The weddings described by Vicky were in respect of her partner's second marriage.

During the interviews, which lasted on average an hour, individuals were asked to describe the process involved when they got married, including details of both their legally binding wedding and their independent celebrant-led ceremony. Each focus group was held for an hour and a half, and celebrants were asked to describe their most recent wedding (prior to the COVID-19 pandemic), as well as their views and experiences of the current legal marriage process and the Law Commission's (2020) proposals for reform. The author was a member of the research team who collected the original data; attended the three focus groups and conducted all but one of the interviews. Verbatim transcripts were produced from audio-recordings and re-analysed following the end of the wider study. This secondary analysis was informed by a narrative thematic analytical approach which explores shared common language to interpret relationships between action and meaning (Dilworth-Anderson et al., 2011; Riessman, 2008). This involved numerous close readings of the transcripts before constructing narrative summaries of key themes for each participant. Careful attention was paid to the specific context (individual backgrounds, motivations and ceremonial choices) and figurative language used to describe the wedding ceremonies. The individual summaries were then compared for similarities and differences.

In the sections that follow, two narrative themes (each with a linked sub-theme) are described as pertinent to the interplay between decisions to have an independent celebrant-led wedding ceremony and existing legally binding wedding ceremonies. Exemplar quotes are identified with an assigned pseudonym and as a participating celebrant (C) or individual interview (I). The thematic findings are then further interpreted in line with the Robbins et al. (2022) multi-dimensional conceptual model of change in norms in a final discussion section, along with reflection upon what these findings may mean for marriage law reform. As it was not possible to explore consensus with a limited sample, reference to a public conversation about celebrant-led wedding ceremonies on an online forum is included to inform the discussion. For further information about the wider study context and methods, please see the project report (Probert et al., 2022a).

Ceremonial Autonomy

While, as discussed above, relational limitations to individual agency were largely accepted or accommodated in the design of independent celebrant-led wedding ceremonies (Blake et al., 2023), formal legal constraints were an influential reason as to why couples prioritised an alternative non-legally binding form of wedding. In line with Pywell (2020), ceremonial restrictions in the current marriage laws, a lack of availability for preferred dates and the costs of legally binding ceremonies influenced decisions to have an independent celebrant-led wedding ceremony (Probert et al., 2022a). For example, some couples did not want to wait for registrar availability for a Saturday wedding that could require notice of more than a year. Others wanted to hold their ceremony in a venue which was not approved for weddings because that venue held significant personal meaning to them or could help keep costs down by not being limited to preferred suppliers. Couples also wanted greater flexibility to include rituals within their ceremonies which due to their nature (e.g. religious association or inclusion of alcohol) would not be permitted under the current legal restrictions on civil ceremonies.

Yet, this analysis suggests that the agency sought by couples choosing independent celebrant-led wedding ceremonies extended beyond being offered more choice – to a sense of control. As Mairead (I) explains:

We felt like religious ceremonies and civil ceremonies either had a lot of restrictions, or extra complications. And we just felt like the celebrant wedding meant we could do what we wanted to do… I bet loads of registrars do lovely weddings that are really nice. But I think we just got a bit scared because of the things that were being said about how they come in, and if you're not on time, they might have to leave early or something like that. And the idea of being on a clock… because I thought there's always the possibility of weddings running late. And I just thought it's not a stress that we want to deal with on the day.

Along with Mairead (I), the younger individuals interviewed appeared to expect autonomy over their wedding ceremony. As per findings reported by Baker and Elizabeth (2014), Mairead described waiting ‘until we were earning enough money because we wanted to pay for our own wedding’. Although family members were given roles to help set up the bespoke ceremony, and often played a part in the ceremony itself, none of the interviewees reported any family involvement in their ceremonial decisions. Participants who were marrying for a second time emphasised inputting into ceremonial design due to their experience of not having a say in their first wedding. For example, Karen (I) explained that the religious wedding ceremony she had for her first marriage was suggested by her father and conducted in his native language which she did not speak:

At one point the priest goes up [to]…the inner sanctum… does a bit of praying inside and comes out. Well, [groom] didn’t know what the heck was going on and he went to follow him and the guy … said, “no, no. We don’t follow the priest. We just carry on going around”. Because my dad had no idea about telling us anything about the ceremony. We were totally in the dark… He just said, “don’t worry. He will do it all in English.” No, he didn’t! That was hilarious. After the fact, not during!

From her experience working as a celebrant, Karen (I) reported couples who she had worked with: ‘people even younger than me have said, “the first time round it wasn’t really our ceremony… it was our parents. They paid for it; they chose the guests… [Now] we want to do it this way… and we want it completely different because we had no real input into that then. We want to have an input into it now.”’ Amanda (I) similarly described a lack of input into her first wedding. She remembered the religious ceremony as lovely but as ‘very vicar centred. He didn’t know us from Adam. In the same way a Registrar wouldn’t either’.

Celebrant Familiarity

A preference to be familiar with the person conducting the ceremony was a common thread in the desire for autonomy over the ceremony. As Mairead (I) explains:

We were a bit worried about a civil ceremony… It felt like, ‘Okay, you have your registrar and they're going to come, you're going to meet them about 15 minutes before you get married.’… We both felt quite anxious about it… We just liked the idea of knowing who was going to do it… the registrar could be lovely, but then what if they’re not? You know, and we just thought ‘We don't know what we're going to get, is the thing. We don’t know who we’re going to get.’

In many of the cases described, couples had a pre-existing relationship with the celebrant that they chose. For example, Amanda (I) chose her employer who works as a celebrant:

She's been a huge part of my life and my career… it just felt more important to me that somebody that I wanted to do that, to join me and my husband together, was someone that I knew. She's done a lot of ceremonies for people that she knows… it just made it easier for us to be able to talk about what we wanted without someone thinking that we were mad and crazy. And someone that just got it and understood the angle that we were coming from.

Whether the celebrant was already known to the couple or not, participants explained that the autonomy to choose who officiated at their wedding ceremony meant that they could select someone who shared a worldview and understood where the couple were coming from. This in turn meant a greater sense of trust that the celebrant would respectfully deliver a meaningful wedding ceremony as it was envisioned. Such a reason is often given by couples in the US who ask a friend or family member to become authorised to marry them (Hoesly, 2015). This sense of trust with the celebrant was supported by the process of collaboratively designing the bespoke ceremony which developed familiarity, if not friendship between the couple and celebrant. As Laura (C) explained, couples ‘really get to know me and likewise me them because otherwise we can’t write a bespoke and personal ceremony that is truly about them and what they want to say to each other on that significant day’. Deborah (C) described how she met with an anxious bride a few times, in addition to her usual meetings, as ‘it was really important to her to know the person that was going to be standing at the end of the aisle when she got there’.

Ex-registrars saw this as a key difference between their former work as a registrar and their current role as a celebrant. As per Tashi (C): ‘it's one of the major differences, that you form a relationship with your couple, and you get to know them in detail… Those relationships are really important, so it feels like you’re a member of the family that's actually taking the ceremony’. Celebrancy was described as ‘far more rewarding’ (Bethany (C)) not least in being able to deliver a bespoke rather than standardised ceremony:

When you do eight weddings on a Saturday and you’re using the same words for every couple and you get to the point where you don’t really even see the couple in front of you… for the couples it's expensive to pay for two registrars, especially if it's at a registered premises. But I always felt like I was really short-changing them. No matter how much we say we’ll try very hard to make every one personal and lovely and smile… it's very hard actually to feel like you’re putting anything into it other than just reading the words… It's the best day of their lives, thus far, for many of them and it's really important that I feel I am being part of their wedding and that I’m not just doing this in order to go onto the next one. Deborah (C)

Amanda (I) shared a similar view of civil weddings and gave it as a reason for choosing an independent celebrant-led wedding ceremony: ‘I never wanted to get married in a register office because I kind of see it as a conveyor belt’. Overall, participating celebrants welcomed a possibility for their ceremonies to become legally binding. However, a key concern was a potential loss of flexibility through legal regulation:

I don't want to be told that… I can't do a ceremony up a mountain, or I can't include this unity ceremony, or create new ones because we're then doing the legal side. That would in some ways be the worst of all worlds… We might have our own restrictions on what we're prepared to do… but there is that whole focus on what's right for the couple. Tashi (C)

Celebrants recognised that couples were seeking ceremonial autonomy to design a wedding which would be meaningful to their individual situation and questioned the fit of marriage laws with contemporary social values:

The existing system is based on the idea that the State replaces a religion in monitoring the commitment of two people who are signing the register. We have moved as a society, very much further away from that principle… and only a celebrant-led ceremony can catch up with that shift in societal mores. Kester (C)

Legal Separation

At first glance, as per Pywell (2020), the choice to have an independent celebrant-led wedding ceremony appears not to indicate a rejection of legal marriage. All the individuals interviewed had a legally binding wedding in addition to their bespoke ceremony and celebrants explained that most of the couples they worked with had a civil ceremony, as they wanted to be legally married. For some couples it was important for their bespoke ceremony to be held on the same day as their legally binding ceremony, so that there was not cognitive dissonance as to the date that they married, and which would be their anniversary. Amanda (I) reported that she paid ‘a lot more money for the Registrar to come out… [because] I didn’t want two dates for technically what I saw as our wedding’. Participants reported that ideally both ceremonies would also be held in the same venue so that they did not ‘have all the faff about the legal side of it being done elsewhere’ (Jacob (C)). But others such as Chloe (I) explained that they did not care enough about the legal formalities to make this a priority: ‘It would’ve been nice to do it all at the same day, in the same place… it did have the licence for it, the building that we got married in, but it cost an extra couple of hundred quid. We just didn’t care enough… to pay that’.

A narrative wherein the legal process was akin to an administrative process which could be easily separated from the ceremonial aspects of a wedding was commonplace. Links were made to other significant life-events where the law takes an administrative role and the long-standing separation of legal marriage and wedding ceremonies for many in England and Wales. For example, Ruth (C) would tell couples that ‘you register a baby's birth and then you have a christening, you register a death and then you have a funeral. So, you register your legal marriage and then you have a wedding ceremony’. While Tashi (C) drew on her own marriage experience:

It's separating out the two sides, if you like. So that couples understand that the one side is administrative, and the other side is their wedding day. So, they don’t have to merge to be the one… Myself, 25 years ago, when I got married, I had to have two separate ones because I couldn’t have a faith-based Buddhist ceremony legally… This has gone on for a long time for people… This is a day when the couple are making a commitment that is going to form the foundation of their future life together and everyone deserves to make those in a way that has meaning for them, rather than being told what that foundation should be.

Carla (C) explained that celebrants were ‘careful with using any legal wording’. She drew a distinction between marriage – as a term she would not use in her ceremonies – and a wedding which she too saw as requiring bespoke elements in order to be meaningful: it is ‘all about declaring your love and commitment to each other… [and where] proper promises are made. Not the legal contracting words and the declaratory words that they have to say at the registration’. Jan (C) felt that this narrative was easily accepted by couples who tend not to ‘bat an eyelid about the legal part. It is very much just registering the marriage to them and it's just part of a process, but it is not considered to be the wedding day… it's changed a lot… my couples feel more married at my ceremony than their legal part at the register office’. This indeed reflected the experience of Amanda (I) who explained that the longest part of her civil ceremony was filling out the wedding certificate: ‘I didn’t consider that to be my wedding, even though that was the legal part’.

Heather (C) reported that couples will often ask if they have to have the separate legal ceremony as it is not what they want: ‘In my experience, when I’m talking to couples… it does feel as if a lot of them just simply want to get round the legal process. That is why they’re having a celebrant. So, they’re sort of, “well, do I have to do that?” Yes, you do. Because otherwise it's not legal’. Chloe (I) felt she ‘just needed the piece of paper, so it was a bit annoying having to go through all the hoops that we had to go through… if we didn’t have to do it, we wouldn’t have’. She explained that ‘neither of us had ever assumed that we’d definitely get married because we never saw that as a massive part of our lives… so we talked about if we did it, why we would want to do it and that ended up being… [getting] everyone we love together and have a big party, basically and celebrate what we’ve got’. Mairead (I) the second youngest interviewee, shared a similar view:

We didn’t want to get married just because our friends were getting married. We wanted to get married at the right time for us… it doesn’t matter at all. You can get married anytime… I knew we were going to be together in the long haul when we moved in together… we almost felt married… you basically are in many ways… The idea of getting married was wanting to bring people together to celebrate.

Celebrants described encouraging couples to get legally married; some made it a requirement that they saw a marriage certificate before commencing the bespoke ceremony to protect themselves from potential sham weddings, but also to be able to authentically announce them as a married couple. As per Jacob (C): ‘I always insist on looking at their wedding certificate before we actually start this ceremony, which I was told to do in my training’ and Bethany (C): ‘we advise them to do a statutory ceremony… before the celebration. Basically, so you can publicly announce them as husband and wife at the end’.

Legal Understanding

Celebrants described a mixed picture as to public understanding of the lack of legal status of independent celebrant-led wedding ceremonies. Some celebrants felt that awareness was fast-growing. As Anya (C) explained ‘when I started it was educate, educate, educate and now… I find couples that come to me, not all… but nearly all of them are… already set up in their heads for a 2 × 2’. Her reference to a 2 × 2 is a shorthand for a statutory minimum civil ceremony which involves the basic declaration for a legal marriage at a fixed low-cost fee with only the couple getting married and two witnesses in attendance (Probert et al., 2022b).

However, other celebrants described continuing to take an educational role due to a limited public understanding of what is required to be legally married:

We’re called upon… to help the couple go and understand that process. Because a lot of couples’ beliefs is that if they go to the registrar beforehand, then they have to have the full ceremony room… licensed for 30 to 40 people and pay £400/£500 and they’re not told about the declaration. So, right through my celebrant journey, one of the key things has been to explain to the couples what the declaration is and what they need to do. Emily (C)

Mairead (I) explained that her and her partner had reflected on what type of ceremony would be right for them as a couple, as they had not been aware of what would be involved in the different forms of wedding ceremonies available: ‘we did have many conversations about what kind of ceremony we wanted to have… we just didn’t really know much about it’. She described choosing to have a 2 × 2 civil ceremony prior to an independent celebrant-led wedding ceremony in case not doing so disadvantaged them in a way that was difficult to anticipate: ‘We felt that it was something that we needed to do. Even though we're not really fully aware of the legal consequences of married versus unmarried couples, we thought, “well, it's probably safer that we just do the legal bit and make sure we have that on paper”’. Mairead (I) also described feeling mystified by the ceremonial nature of the civil ceremony:

I think they just made it sound very plain; they said, ‘you'll come in and you'll have your ceremony and then you'll go,’ and they didn't really go very into detail about it… we just felt unprepared. Because it had been made to sound like; you have two witnesses; you say some words, and you sign some papers… we thought it was just legal, like legal stuff… Paperwork day… I'd say [the celebrant-led ceremony] was the most meaningful because it felt like ‘this is our wedding.’ I think that's how we saw it. We saw this is our wedding day, and the bit that we did on the Tuesday, two days before, was our kind of prep work for the day… we'll get those documents signed before we do our wedding.

Chloe (I) too seemed to think the legal aspect to getting married amounted to paperwork and therefore could not understand why there were ceremonial restrictions: ‘the more freedom the better, as long as you’ve signed what you need to sign’. She described being ‘pleasantly surprised that the vows we had to say in the legal one weren’t that bad. [Laughs]. You know, I thought it would be all obey and that rubbish’.

Reported participant experiences suggested registrars, as state officials, could demonstrate a commitment to the rule of law which inhibited flexibility. Celebrants described registrars putting couples off having an independent celebrant-led wedding ceremony by questioning their legitimacy and refusing to conduct a civil ceremony to coincide with a celebrant-led ceremony. As Deborah (C) reported: ‘it can be a battle with registration services to actually get them to acknowledge that this is a perfectly normal way of getting married and that it's legitimate… I have to reiterate to couples that this isn’t an illegal wedding as that particular registration service will say’. While there are no legal restrictions on the order of wedding ceremonies, Lucy (I) explained that she had to insist to registrars that her independent celebrant-led ceremony (which was being held in the same hotel as her civil wedding) would take place first:

They said they couldn’t have the celebrant ceremony beforehand; it's got to be the registry first. I said I don’t understand why that's a problem. At the end of the day, it's our wedding day. It's not yours and we want it this way round. They didn’t want any indication that there had been a celebrant ceremony just beforehand, so the room was completely stripped.

Celebrants also reported venues refusing to recommend celebrants due to a fear of losing their wedding licence. As per Sue (C): ‘I’ve heard and had things said to me by wedding coordinators or managers of hotels along the lines of “oh well, we don’t want to lose our licence… we only do registrar weddings here”’. While the participating celebrants appeared knowledgeable and respectful of marriage laws, they struggled to understand why reform had not kept pace with social changes:

A shining example of how archaic and daft our laws are, that… [as] an ordained minister right across America… a couple could fly out with me… get married on the beach in Florida, legally binding in America and 100% legally binding back here. But I can’t marry them here on my own doorstep. Laura (C)

Discussion

Weakening of Legal Marriage Norms?

In this section, the findings are discussed in line with the concepts of Robbins et al. (2022) multidimensional model to explore change in norms. In respect of polarity, couples appear to endorse legal marriage in their behaviour by continuing to have a legally binding wedding, as well as their bespoke ceremony. Yet they saw the latter as the point at which they married and questioned the necessity of the former. This opposition and endorsement suggest the legal norms of marriage have a bipolar polarity for couples choosing independent celebrant-led wedding ceremonies. Harding (2006) similarly showed through an analysis of attitudes of lesbian and gay men to legal recognition of same-sex relationships, that couples can both simultaneously comply and resist legal rules. The findings reported herein point to a move away from a vertical ordering wherein wedding norms are determined by external systems of state or religious authority, to individual – embedded in communal – authority. Couples were not simply seeking further choice over the practicalities of when and where they could marry, but autonomy over the form and meaning of their wedding ceremony, as well as familiarity with the person marrying them. An active role was sought in how they married, rather than the passive detached role currently expected by legal norms. As per the Humanist couples in R (Harris and Others) v Secretary of State for Justice [2020] , some participants reported not wanting to pay for state officials to be present to render their bespoke ceremony legally binding.

In respect of conditionality, a legally binding marriage was not given for all participating individuals choosing to have an independent celebrant-led wedding ceremony. Couples had cohabitated for several years prior to marriage and did not see a huge difference between cohabitation and marriage. In line with existing research, getting married was perceived as a way to bring loved ones together and celebrate (Blake and Janssens, 2021; Carter and Duncan, 2018). That marriage was not a necessity may reflect the largely non-religious sample, but it also points to the lack of fit of marriage law which governs weddings and the symbolic practices which are perceived to constitute a marriage. Where values align and are widely agreed upon, it is thought individuals typically conform to institutional norms without questioning their validity (Cherlin, 2020). Couples choosing independent celebrant-led ceremonies in this sample, did not see the options for a legally binding wedding as providing the personal resonance and meaning they sought from their wedding. As discussed in our earlier paper, a referential sense of belonging and self-actualisation had more meaning than the contractual rights and responsibilities associated with legal marriage, with couples seeking to express the extant beliefs and values which they experience as important rather than the limited identity markers of religious or non-religious emphasised by existing marriage law (Blake et al., 2023).

Indeed, in respect of intensity, these findings point to a lower sense of personal obligation to conform to legal norms of marriage, with celebrants reporting that in some cases they need to take steps to reinforce it as a normative imperative. While celebrants described encouraging or even insisting on a legally binding wedding prior to their ceremonies, they also reinforced a narrative wherein the legal ‘registration’ aspect of marriage can be easily separated from the ‘ceremonial’ wedding. Such a narrative is arguably easily accepted where, as the findings suggest, there is a lack of public awareness of what is involved in the legal process of getting married, including what is required for a legally binding wedding, as well as what meaning the legal status of marriage has for a couple as opposed to cohabitation. Some participants described expecting the legal formalities to be paperwork, with surprise expressed both at the ceremonial nature of a statutory civil wedding and that standardised vows could be relevant and meaningful.

Beyond our sample, an online public discussion on the UK-based website Mumsnet (2021) suggests a mixed picture regarding consensus. One hundred twenty six posts responded to a member's question about the appropriateness of having a registrar-led wedding a week before a celebrant-led ceremony. Many described such actions as ‘very normal’ and ‘common’, drawing on their personal experience of attending weddings in the UK, as well as similar practices in Germany and France. In line with the findings of this study, those who had a celebrant-led wedding ceremony explained that they kept the legal wedding as short and simple as possible, so that their bespoke ceremony did not feel like a repeated event. However, others expressed strong sentiments that they could not understand the point of having a second ceremony and would not be happy to be invited to a ‘show’ or ‘renewal’ ceremony as they perceived the legally binding ‘bit’ as the meaningful part and the rest as trimmings. There appeared to be an inaccurate supposition from most users that the legally binding aspect was the signing of the register. As this was perceived as the ‘boring bit’ wedding guests do not typically witness, it appeared to contribute to an ease of separating the legal formalities from perceived meaningful wedding ceremony traditions, as described in the findings herein.

While our earlier work exploring the design of independent celebrant-led wedding ceremonies suggested an enduring normative framework guiding expectations as to what getting married involves, the findings of this study indicate a weakening of legal norms within this social template. Robbins et al. (2022) also suggest that the norm to marry is weak due to individuals placing different weights on the circumstances demarcating marriage. Their findings are not directly comparable due to regulatory and cultural differences, such as religiosity, between the US and England and Wales. However, this study furthers understanding as to how legal norms such as the available options for legally binding weddings, as well as individual perceptions of these options and relevancy of the legal status of marriage to their lives may also demarcate the norm to marry. Robbins et al. (2022) ask if the norm to marry is in a transitional phase, moving from one normative system to another. By applying their conceptual model specifically to the role of legal norms in getting married, this analysis of decisions to have an independent celebrant-led wedding ceremonies points to a move from a unified social and legal institution due to a failure to update formal rules to better reflect prevailing social values and contemporary relationship practices. As per Gross (2005), it also points to a need for conceptual models exploring change in marriage norms to distinguish meaning-constitutive norms and regulative norms, so that the character of normative expectations guiding human behaviour in getting married and any potential changes can be better unpacked.

Marriage Law Reform

Designed in the 19th century, the existing law sets out the formalities for a legally binding wedding on the basis that marriage is a legal or religious contract and therefore an inherently public act which does not pay heed to personal needs (Edge and Corrywright, 2011; Probert et al., 2015). Such a cultural framework for the law does not reflect a societal shift towards relational individualism, wherein alongside a sense of belonging, values such as autonomy and expression are emphasised (Blake et al., 2023; Taylor, 2007). In line with Ewick and Sibley's (1998) theory of legal consciousness, the selective engagement with legal marriage by those choosing to have an independent celebrant-led wedding ceremony could be described as a creative adaption of the process of getting married or ‘playing the law game’ in response to a powerlessness ‘before the law’. Indeed, having a bespoke ceremony in addition to a legally binding wedding could be seen as demonstrating the plasticity of the current marriage laws. However, the preference for participants in this study was for their bespoke wedding ceremony to be legally binding in itself. They were not looking to have multiple ceremonies, as can be common in some religious communities, but to make their commitment to each other once, in a way which was most meaningful to them (Probert et al., 2022a).

In terms of critical legal pluralism, the decision to have an additional independent celebrant-led wedding ceremony could alternatively be described as ‘law inventing’ not merely ‘law abiding’ (Kleinhans and Macdonald, 1997). While Hull (2003) described non-legally binding same-sex ceremonies as both a cultural practice and legal ambition, couples choosing independent celebrant-led wedding ceremonies may not be intentionally seeking institutional change. In line with a critical institutional perspective, the lack of awareness and understanding of legal norms of getting married appears to have created a space for couples to implement rules in new ways (Mahoney and Thelen, 2009). They are not intentionally creating something new as the term inventing implies, but as per the concept of bricolage, through consciously and unconsciously adapting wedding traditions they are incrementally adjusting normative expectations for getting married to accommodate changing social norms.

This analysis of decisions to have an independent celebrant-led wedding ceremony does not suggest noncompliance with legal norms, yet the weakening of legal norms could imply that within generation there may be less compliance. Younger participants, in particular, did not see legal marriage as a necessity. So together with the lack of understanding of its meaning, and barriers from registrars not promoting statutory civil weddings nor working with celebrants, it may not be too big a leap to think that over time the legal norms of marriage could move from bipolar to non-existent, with couples choosing a bespoke wedding ceremony without a legally binding wedding. Aware of the legal background for this study, participating celebrants reported diligently advising couples of the lack of legal status of their ceremonies. However, the possibility of couples only having a bespoke wedding ceremony and incorrectly believing – in line with enduring long-term cohabitation myth and some couples who have an Islamic nikah wedding ceremony (Barlow, 2020) – that they will be recognised as married in the eyes of the law cannot be ruled out.

The Law Commission (2022) has made it clear that it is for Government to decide if celebrant-led weddings are to become legally binding. If an affirmative decision is taken, the Law Commission has proposed a system wherein celebrants who have undertaken the relevant mandatory training would be able to register to offer civil weddings. De Koning (2011) has categorised three institutional change processes: aggregation, alteration, and articulation. This potential reform would aggregate new institutional elements with different socio-cultural values onto existing elements to create a more practically useful institutional framework for the competing value spheres of modernity. It would give couples the opportunity to design a bespoke legally binding wedding with a celebrant whom they can build a relationship with, whilst also allowing those who prefer to pick from a menu of standardised options the continued choice to do so. The Law Commission's proposals to alter civil ceremonies by relaxing restrictions on religious content would also mean legally binding celebrant-led weddings could continue to acknowledge couples’ religious and spiritual beliefs alongside the multitude of identity markers which are deemed to be important (Blake et al., 2023).

Arguably, what this analysis suggests will be key alongside these proposed reforms, if implemented, is a clear and widely promoted articulation of the purpose of legal marriage and what is involved in getting married, so that couples can better understand what meaning it has for them and how legally binding wedding options can meet their needs. Such a process will require an open debate as to what vision of marriage will underpin decisions as to how legally binding weddings are regulated.

Conclusion

The findings of this secondary analysis indicate that for those choosing to have an independent celebrant-led wedding ceremony, marriage is subject-institutional; personal and communal validity rather than legal validity constitutes the institutional form of marriage. Independent celebrant-led wedding ceremonies continue to reflect meaning-constitutive normative expectations of a celebratory public commitment, yet the regulative legal norms including standardised processes and detached registrars appear to have lost their legitimacy. Rules can never be precise enough to include the complexities of all potential circumstances, but without addressing this mismatch between social and legal norms of marriage, and ensuing drift from legal norms, marriage as a legal institution could continue to lose its regulatory authority by default, rather than by design.

As an in-depth study of a small number of cases, the findings described are exploratory and limited to those who took part. While it highlights how couples may be adapting their pathway to marriage, studies are needed to explore how structural and social constraints may restrict others from similar individual action. Further research with larger samples is also required to explore how consensus may vary by sub-populations, as well as to advance conceptual understandings of the meaning-constitutive and regulative norms to marry. For example, by looking at why ceremony is important to some, but not all who make a relationship commitment. A greater insight into normative expectations for getting married would inform both understandings of institutional change and policy responses to changing social norms.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

Sincere thanks are offered to the individuals who kindly took the time to share their experience in this research. My thanks also go to Anne Barber, Director of Civil Ceremonies Ltd who supported participant recruitment and Dr Tania Barton who conducted one of the interviews. I would also like to acknowledge Professor Rebecca Probert who led the focus groups and Dr Rajnaara Akhtar who supervised the data collection. I am grateful to them and the journal reviewers for constructive feedback on initial drafts of this article.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: While the author received no funding for the secondary analysis reported in this paper, the data was collected as part of an empirical study titled ‘When is a wedding not a marriage? Exploring non-legally binding ceremonies’ which was funded by the Nuffield Foundation. The views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily the Foundation.

ORCID iD

Sharon Blake

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