Wedding Central Forum

I was told by my wedding celebrant, we can pretty much do what we want in our ceremony. There are some legalities such as, the celebrant has to identify herself,need witnesses and some other things. I was looking online at wedding scripts and saw this.

There are specific requirements that must be met to ensure your marriage is legal.

These are outlined in the Legal Requirements section.

As regards the actual Marriage Vows themselves, unless you are being married by a marriage celebrant from a main stream religious organisation, the following words must be used:

“I call upon the persons here present to witness that I, A.B. (or C.D.), take thee, C.D. (or A.B.), to be my lawful wedded wife (or husband)”; or words to that effect.

You may add your own words before or after these words, but the act of saying these words is a major component of the marrying process that is conducted by federally appointed marriage celebrants who conduct civil ceremonies or non-aligned religious ceremonies, or Registry Office celebrants.

There are some slight changes that are permissible. For example:

One may leave out "lawful" (in case with nerves one may say "awful") or wedded, but not both.
One may use a First and Middle or First and Last name for A or B, but provided the couples full names are used in full, sometime before the Vows, preferably early in the ceremony
The first phrase may become " I ask everyone here to witness " but not " I ask family and friends here to witness" etc.


I was also reading a old article where many ceremonies didn't include this and there was a backlash or many civil celebrant weddings not being valid, due to this.

I was starting to write my own vows, and now i'm stumped, as it conflicts what my celebrant said.

In all the years WC has been operating noone has ever posted about their wedding not being recognised due to the celebrant not following legal requirements. So long as your celebrant is trained and authorised I wouldn't stress about it.

Why not go straight to the source?

http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/ ... 5/s45.html

http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/ ... 5/s46.html

Write your own vows. You can fit them ino the ceremony whenever it best suits.

We wrote our own vows, with assistance from the celebrant- she put all the legal stuff at the front, then we had our vows, then the final legal bit at the end. They should be able to assist you, or at least provide you with an example.