MARRIAGE BY PEOXY.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXII, Issue 8148, 28 April 1885, Page 4

MARRIAGE BY PEOXY.

One can do a good many things by 7)roxy ; but the line must be drawn somewhere, and it is obviously incorrect to get married by proxy. It is singular indeed that a young woman, on the day when the most! momentous event in a woman's life is on the point of being accomplished, would dream of delegating another to represent her, and hardly less strange that, having acted in this manner, she would believe the union contracted under such abnormal conditions to be a legal one. It was by proxy, however, that a young girl chose to be married in a West Prussian town, and she has now made the unpleasant discovery that her marriage under these circumstances is no marriage at all in the eyes of the law. On the dayfixed for the civil ceremony the bride being anxious to superintend the preparations for the wedding breakfast, instead of going in person to the Town Hall with the bridegroom, sent her sister in her place. None of the relatives appear to have perceived the impropriety of the proceeding, and the mayor pronounced the wrong woman married to the right man. The folloiwng day the real bride went to church with her husband, and the marriage was solemnised. Immediately afterwards, however, the couple were informed not only thai, owing to the substitution of one person for another before the mayor, it was null and void, but that they will be prosecuted for making a false declaration to the civil registrar.