Am I Married?

[YikesAmIMarried]

Hi, I hope someone can put my mind to rest.

I got married a few weeks ago, well at least I thought I did. The ceremony was conducted by our very old family priest/friend. He's lovely but very forgetful. He kept making mistakes like getting things in the wrong order and getting my husband's name wrong. At the time we thought it was funny and just went with the flow. We signed the register and were declared husband and wife.

The only thing problem is that a few people have since commented (in a jokey way) that we aren't actually married because the priest forgot to ask if anyone had any objections. Now I'm really worried. Is this true?

Our priest is 93 by the way, hence the mistakes.

I don't know specifically, but in general under the Marriage Act a marriage is only void if the couple "knowingly and willingly" didn't comply with one of the normal legal requirements. So I would be very surprised if there were a stricter standard applied to this.

Were you married by banns or by licence?

It was by banns which were read out in the parish church.

The late Diana, Princess of Wales, famously got the name of her betrothed wrong in front of millions when making her wedding vows and if that had been lawful reason to declare the marriage null and void, she would not have been the recipient of a less than considering his vast wealth generous divorce settlement.

If you're looking for a way out you'll have to wait a year before you can sue for divorce as the banns were called giving ample time for any objectors to queue up to show just cause why your nuptials shouldn't be consumated, and the ink's dry on your marriage certificate

It might be an idea to check your marriage certificate just to make sure that you're married to each other and not to some randoms the priest recalled at an inappropriate moment

Check the date too. Our vicar put the wrong date so on that we were not married until the week after. We had to get a new marriage certificate which was a real pain as everyone had to sign it again.

Thank heavens for that. I still quite like him so don't want rid quite yet.