In occasions we are presented with the query of what is the role of witnesses in a civil wedding. Also, in the case of a non-legal Ceremony, such as a Wedding Renewal, or a Pre-Wedding or Post-Wedding Ceremony, that’s performed to accommodate the availability of Household and Close friends, where no license is involved, there is a lovely Honorary Ceremony Certificate document that can serve as a focal point for signing, even enabling the complete Party to sign as participants to the Event, even penning their very good wishes for the Couple’s happiness.
In the Catholic Church , it is the bride and bridegroom who perform the Sacrament of Matrimony (marriage), but a marriage can only be valid if the Church has a witness at the wedding ceremony whose function is to query the couple to make sure that they have no obstacle to marriage (such as an un-annulled preceding marriage or specific undisclosed details involving the couple) and that they are freely deciding upon to wed every other.
If a couple applies for their marriage license less than three days just before their established wedding date, they will want to have a separate ceremony within the period the license is valid (in which the parties assent or declare, in the physical presence of the officiant and at least two attending witnesses, that they take every single other to be husband and wife).
In these scenarios where the officiating priest or deacon is willing to witness the marriage, the completed pre-nuptial papers with copies are to be submitted to the Chancery office for critique and the granting of the permission for the teenage marriage by the Archbishop or his delegate and the copies of these papers retained by the Chancery for protected keeping.
If you need to have a backup I am cost-free right now and would be delighted to come and be a witness for you. Every single couple is required to participate in a pre-marriage program such as an Engaged Encounter, or any other pre-marriage plan authorized by the priest or deacon who will officiate at the proposed wedding. At the conclusion of the Marriage Ceremony, the Marriage Officiant, the couple, and the witness or witnesses are needed to sign the Marriage License. You will simply be a witness on that day, not a guarantor that every little thing beyond that point has to be appropriate.
