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Eighteenth-century courts needed to rely on presumptions in favour of marriage for a number of reasons, some practical and some legal, but the misleading reporting of one leading nineteenth-century case, followed by institutional changes and a stronger focus on precedent, led to the original evidential assumptions being obscured. A further blurring of the different strands of the presumption occurred in the twenty-first century, leading to confusion in recent cases. Understanding how the much-misunderstood presumptions have developed reveals why they were needed, when they became decoupled from their evidential underpinnings, and how, when and why they should operate today.

The Marriage Act 1836 marked an important change in the rites required for a valid marriage, allowing couples to marry in a register office or registered place of worship. For some, however, these unfamiliar rites did not constitute a marriage at all, and in the early 1850s a particular controversy emerged regarding Anglican clergymen who ‘remarried’ couples who had already been legally married under the 1836 Act. This article examines three cases of such ‘remarriages’ and how two of the clergymen involved subsequently found themselves facing prosecution. It analyses the circumstances in which a rite might become a ‘wrong’ in the eyes of the law and traces the impact of these cases on the development of a new provision governing when an additional religious ceremony could take place and, more unexpectedly, on the form of register office weddings.

It is a belief almost universally shared that the Clandestine Marriages Act of 1753 gave parents absolute control over the marriages of their minor children, and that a failure to obtain parental consent rendered a marriage void. For almost seventy years this Act was in force, from its implementation on March 25, 1754, until it was repealed by the Marriage Act 1823. In this same period historians have discerned the rise of the affective family, characterized by marriage for love and by equality between all members of the family. The tension between these two ideas has resulted in some rather tortuous explanations being advanced in an attempt to reconcile affective individualism and parental power. But was the period between 1754 and 1823 as distinctive as has been assumed?

The laws regulating how and where couples can get married – as opposed to who they can marry – are widely recognised as being in need of reform. The basic structure of the current law dates back to the Marriage Act 1836, and many elements – the requirements for Anglican weddings and differential treatment of Jewish and Quaker weddings – have a still longer history. Despite the law's longevity, many of the current requirements have their origins in past panics, tactical compromises or quick fixes. While the laws enacted in 1836 were shaped by their historical context, even then the legal framework did not fit how couples wanted to marry. This paper traces the history of marriage law reform to explain how we ended up with a set of laws that are highly restrictive, inconsistent and complex, and why reform is needed.

In 1845, the conviction of Thomas Hall for bigamy was reported as an example of the unequal way in which the law operated, with great play being made of the steps that Hall could have taken to free himself from his first wife by a divorce, were it not for the cost involved. Since then, virtually every account of nineteenth-century bigamy or divorce has included some version of the judge's apparently ‘brilliantly sarcastic’ speech. But what the judge was reported as saying at the time differs in a number of crucial particulars from what later commentators have reported him as saying. Later accounts have played up the misconduct of the first wife, inflated the cost of obtaining a divorce, and exaggerated the poverty and lowly status of Hall, while playing down the sentence he received and ignoring his deception of his second wife. This paper traces the evolution of the account over time, and identifies the timing of the various changes that were made. It illustrates how history is used – by politicians, reformers, and scholars – to support both a particular view of the past and to bolster claims as to how the law should change for the future.

COVID-19-related restrictions had an enormous impact on weddings in 2020. For three months, weddings were effectively prohibited, and requirements for social distancing, hand-sanitising and face coverings existed throughout England and Wales for the rest of the year. In August 2020, we conducted a survey of couples who were planning to marry between March and December 2020. This article focuses on how many respondents had postponed their wedding, and what they said about their reasons for doing so. We analyse their responses according to the significance attached to three alternative meanings of a wedding: an event for family and friends, a traditional ceremony that has to be conducted in a particular way, and the individualistic ‘perfect day’. We found that many couples attach considerable importance to who attends their weddings and that some traditions are very important to them, but few responses supported the notion that weddings are principally extravagant displays.

During 2020, weddings were profoundly affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. During periods of lockdown few weddings could take place, and even afterwards restrictions on how they could be celebrated remained. To investigate the impact of such restrictions, we carried out a survey of those whose plans to marry in England and Wales had been affected by Covid-19. The 1,449 responses we received illustrated that the ease and speed with which couples had been able to marry, and sometimes whether they had been able to marry at all, had depended not merely on the national restrictions in place but on their chosen route into marriage. This highlights the complexity and antiquity of marriage law and reinforces the need for reform. The restrictions on weddings taking place also revealed the extent to which couples valued getting married as opposed to having a wedding. Understanding both the social and the legal dimension of weddings is important in informing recommendations as to how the law should be changed in the future, not merely to deal with similar crises but also to ensure that the general law is fit for purpose in the twenty-first century.