Quaker wedding

Quaker weddings are the traditional ceremony of marriage within the Religious Society of Friends.

After the local meeting had approved the couple's intention, an announcement would be made and posted in the market on market day. After this the wedding could take place. Outsiders sometimes criticized Quaker couples for living in sin because they married each other without priests or ministers. George Fox, founder of the Society of Friends, and Margaret Fell married using a modification of this procedure in 1669.

Two years later, when Fox was in Barbados, he sent out another epistle. In this epistle, Fox advocated giving women's meetings the initial responsibility to pass on a couple's intentions when the couple had expressed a desire to be wed. This advice became quite controversial among those who did not want to see women's roles expanded.

When a couple decides to get married they declare their intentions to marry to the meeting (either in writing or in person). In many Yearly Meetings, the meeting then appoints a clearness committee to talk with the couple and make sure that they have properly prepared themselves for marriage. If the committee is clear that this couple is ready, they recommend that the monthly meeting should take this wedding “under their care” and appoint a committee to ensure the couple makes all the needed arrangements for the wedding ceremony. These duties vary but may include helping schedule the date, finding premarital counseling, making the Quaker marriage certificate, making sure the couple knows how to acquire and file any legal documents. In other Yearly Meetings, clearness committees are an option the couple can choose.

In America, some couples choose to marry within the meeting without registering their marriage with the government, a tradition dating back to Quakerism's earliest days. Meetings generally encourage couples to seek legal advice before undertaking this option. Common law marriage (also called "marriage by habit and repute"), by which a couple were legally married simply through cohabitation and by holding themselves out to the world to be husband and wife, is no longer a valid method of marriage in most American jurisdictions. If a couple later needs to prove that they are married, the Quaker wedding certificate signed by witnesses at the ceremony may be sufficient in some states of the United States. A few states have statutes that specifically recognize Quaker marriages, in which ministers are not officiants, as legal.

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