Marriage

The answer to the question of when a ceremony in England was not wholly outside the provisions of the Marriage Act 1949 and would accordingly create a potentially valid marriage should be determined by reference to the provisions of that Act applied in a manner which was consistent with the principles summarised in Collett v Collett [1967] 2 All ER 426 and taking into account the factors referred to in Hudson v Leigh [2009] All ER (D) 124 (Jun).

It was an established principle that the failure to comply with the preliminaries, the publication of banns or obtaining a licence, did not, by itself, affect the validity of the marriage. Such a failure would only result in the marriage being void if the failure was deliberate. Further, the failure to give notice or obtain a certificate did not prevent a marriage from being within the scope of the 1949 Act.