LOVERS IN REVOLT

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21326, 29 October 1932, Page 3 (Supplement)

LOVERS IN REVOLT

ANTIQUATED MARRIAGE - LAW BRITISH THREE O'CLOCK LIMIT Hundreds of young couples who have lately been making wedding arrangements in Britain have been complaining of the marriage law there which forbids the performance of ceremonies after three o clock in the afternoon —a law that does not obtain in New Zealand. The young people have been asking, " Why should it be necessary to be married before three o'clock in the afternoon ?" " Why," they say, " cannot the ceremony be fixed later, so that we can celebrate it with a dinner party?" A strong feeling is growing among young men and women to-day that the marriage laws designed for the Middle Ages should be amended and made more in harmony with modern habits. Most of their elders, have a vague idea that the restriction of marriage to 3 p.m. has some important social or religious idea. This is the origin of it, quoted from medieval canon law: —. " The Church orders that marrages shall not be made except in the daytime, for those who intend honourably and honestly need not fly the light; and since parties are most serious in the morning it is appointed that it (the marriage ceremony) shall be celebrated between the hours of eight and twelve." In 1868 the Royal Commission on the Marriage Laws recommended that so far as the State was concerned the restrictions on the hours of marriage should be discontinued. In 1886 the question was raised once again in the House of Commons. Until that date the latest possible nuptial hour was noon, and originally the Bill extended the hour until 4 p.m. On the grounds that it is dark in England in the winter by four o'clock and that it would be better to limit the rule so as not to allow marriages to be solemnised after dark three o'clock was the hour fixed. A legal expert has explained that the original rule was probably due to the idea that as evening approached there would be a tendency to turn a religious ceremony into a festivity. ' Only another Act of Parliament could win an extension of the marriage hour.