Warwick Law School News

The Government has announced plans to reform weddings law in England and Wales in a move set to completely overhaul how and where couples can marry. This is the biggest change to weddings law in over two hundred years.

Warwick family law associate professor, Dr Rajnaara C Akhtar, led a collaborative study funded by the Nuffield Foundation which explored wedding ceremonies and concluded that current weddings laws failed to meet the needs of today’s diverse, multi-belief and multi-cultural society.

Currently, there are legal restrictions on where a legal wedding can take place and the content of the ceremony. The changes proposed will mean couples can marry wherever they wish and using any ceremony which is meaningful for them. This means a range of religious and belief weddings which were previously excluded by the law, can now form legal marriages.

This is important as it means the law will finally modernise to reflect the modern diversity of England and Wales. Couples will finally be free to have meaningful weddings which they can personalise in a way that has not been possible before.

Dr Akhtar’s research found that couples were marrying using a broad range of ceremonies which the law did not recognise. This required a second wedding ceremony to take place which was legal. This would often result in higher costs. The changes mean more couples can have one single wedding ceremony which is meaningful to them.

The weddings study

In the study, titled ‘When is a wedding not a marriage? Exploring non-legally binding ceremonies’, Dr Akhtar and colleagues found that many couples are disadvantaged by complex legal rules that:

• Restrict where and how marriages can take place;
• Treat some faith and belief ceremonies differently from others;
• Leave some couples unaware that their ceremony has no legal effect;
• Require a level of bureaucracy that many find confusing or exclusionary.

Participants described the system as a ‘minefield’ and ‘clunky and challenging’, with many couples choosing to hold two separate weddings – one ‘legal’ and the other ‘meaningful’, to reflect both the law and their personal or faith beliefs.

The research supported calls for a comprehensive reform to create a simpler, fairer framework that recognises religious, civil, and non-religious belief ceremonies equally, and to give couples freedom to marry in a place meaningful to them.

So, what does that mean for the future of the project? Dr Akhtar told us:

“When the extent of the law reform is announced, it will become clear how significant research has been to achieving this. The next step will be to ensure communities across the country know what the new laws are and how to abide by them. For me, the future also includes research on who should be an officiant and able to oversee legal weddings in minoritised communities.”

Ash Patel, Programme Head Justice, from the Nuffield Foundation said:

“The recommendations arising from Dr Akhtar and her colleagues’ study have clearly influenced the government’s thinking about the reform of the law around weddings. The Nuffield Foundation is pleased to have supported this seminal research, which not only highlights how out of touch weddings law is with modern British society, but also the significant adverse consequences that can arise due to the lack of legal protection usually offered by marriage.”

Dr Akhtar was recently featured on ITV News (30 October 2025 at 6:09pm) discussing the reform and its proposed changes. Watch the interview hereLink opens in a new window.

Find out more about Dr Akhtar's research on her project pageLink opens in a new window.