Your Ceremony

A completed Notice of Intended Marriage form must be given to your celebrant at least one month before the wedding. You can give it to your celebrant up to 18 months beforehand. Your celebrant can help you complete the form. 

The notice may be completed and witnessed outside Australia if required.   Documents required when lodging a Notice of Intended Marriage:

Original Birth Certificate or Passport.    

Passports can be expired but not cancelled. If you don’t have a passport and your birth certificate has been lost or destroyed and you genuinely cannot obtain a new one, you may fill in a Statutory Declaration. I can assist you with this.   

Divorce or Death Certificate. If you are divorced or widowed you must provide proof of how your previous marriage ended.   

NB: All documents in a foreign language must be translated into English by an approved translator. You can find a translator here

Age Requirements

A Court Order is required when either the Bride or the Groom is under 18 years of age. Under no circumstances may two people under the age of 18 marry each other.   

Witnesses

Two people over the age of 18 are required to witness your marriage and sign the Marriage Register and Certificates.   

The Ceremony

While there are many optional components that you can choose to include in your wedding ceremony, there are a few things that are not negotiable. Your celebrant must introduce him/herself and state that they are authorised to solemnise a marriage in Australia. They must also say the following:   

The Monitum:

“Before you are joined in marriage in my presence and in the presence of these witnesses, I am to remind you of the solemn and binding nature of the relationship into which you are about to enter. Marriage, according to law in Australia, is the union of two people to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life.” OR WORDS TO THAT EFFECT. *   

* Slight changes may be made to the above wording, but the meaning must remain the same. The Attorney-General advises that the safest course is for a Civil Marriage Celebrant to always use the words as they appear in the Marriage Act.

Legal Vows:

Although you may lengthen the legal vows to include personal vows or promises that you wish to make to each other, you must each say the following words:   "I call upon the persons here present, to witness that I  (FULL LEGAL NAME OF PARTY 1)  take you (FULL LEGAL NAME OF PARTY 2)  to be my lawful wedded wife (OR husband / wife / spouse / partner in marriage.)"

You may leave out lawful or wedded but not both; you must use one of these words.  

Both the Monitum and the Legal Vows MUST be spoken at your ceremony otherwise your marriage may not be valid.