Cross the border into Scotland and you can marry on a beach. Say your vows on the sand of a Hebridean bay, beside a loch or halfway up a hill, and the marriage is as legal as one in any register office. Do the same in a Cornish cove or on a Welsh headland and, for most couples, it will be a beautiful ceremony but not a marriage. The legal part has to happen somewhere else.
That difference comes down to one old idea. For centuries, the law in England and Wales has cared most about where a wedding takes place. It is also the idea the government’s 2026 consultation proposes to retire. The Law Commission recommended the change in 2022, ministers accepted the principle in 2025, and a public consultation closed on 24 September 2026. Here is how the law works today, what the reform would change, and how far it has got.
Why the law licenses the building
The Ministry of Justice describes the current system as “buildings-based”. The rules are rooted in legislation from the 18th and 19th centuries, and they regulate the place where a wedding happens instead of the person who conducts it.
For generations, a civil wedding meant the register office. The Marriage Act 1994 changed that, and from April 1995 councils could approve other buildings as “approved premises”: a stately home, a barn, a football stadium, a lighthouse. Today more than 7,300 of them hold that approval across England and Wales, and according to the Ministry of Justice nine in ten civil weddings in 2023 took place at one.
To be approved, a building has to be, in the words of the regulations, “seemly and dignified”, safe, and regularly available for weddings. It cannot be a religious building. The rules then shape the day in ways most guests never notice. The ceremony must be open to the public, a notice goes up at every public entrance, and nobody can eat or drink in the ceremony room for an hour beforehand, which is why the welcome drinks are poured next door.
A civil ceremony at an approved venue must also contain nothing religious: no hymns, no readings from sacred texts, no religious ritual, and no minister leading it. Readings, music and your own words are all welcome, and a passing mention of God in a love song is fine. A religious blessing can follow once the civil ceremony is over.
Outdoors, within the fence
Since 1 July 2021 an approved venue has been able to hold the whole ceremony outside in its own grounds. Before that, an outdoor wedding meant a permanent structure such as a bandstand. The change began during the pandemic and was made permanent in 2022, and a marquee on the lawn now counts as well.
The freedom stops at the boundary. The lawn, the walled garden and the orchard count if they belong to the venue. The beach below the cliff, the meadow next door and the woods beyond the fence do not, however close they look in the photographs.
Churches, synagogues and meeting houses
Religious weddings follow their own routes. Most faiths marry in a place of worship registered for weddings, with an authorised person or a registrar present to handle the legal side. You can browse the places of worship registered for marriage, area by area.
The Church of England and the Church in Wales have a route of their own. Their churches are authorised by the Marriage Act itself, and most couples have banns read on three Sundays instead of giving notice at a register office. In rare cases a special licence from the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Faculty Office allows an Anglican wedding somewhere other than a church. Same-sex couples cannot marry in an Anglican church.
Jewish and Quaker weddings are the long-standing exceptions. Both were exempted from a marriage law passed in 1753, and their weddings still follow their own customs, with no legal rules on where they take place. In that one respect, they already have the freedom the reform would give everyone else.
The steps every couple takes
Outside the Anglican route, the legal steps around a wedding are the same whatever kind of ceremony you choose. GOV.UK sets them out in full, and they run like this:
- Choose your venue first, because the notice has to name it.
- Give notice at your local register office, in the district where you have lived for at least the past seven days.
- Wait at least 29 days: notice given on 1 May allows a wedding from 30 May. If the Home Office needs to look at a partner’s immigration status, the wait can stretch to 70 days.
- Marry within 12 months of giving notice, with at least two witnesses.
- Both of you must be 18 or over, the legal minimum since February 2023.
One newer change shows up on the day itself. Since May 2021 there has been no paper register book to sign at the ceremony. You sign a marriage schedule instead, and the marriage goes into an electronic register. The old entry recorded each partner’s father and his occupation. The new one records mothers too, and you can each name up to four parents, step-parents included.
Scotland, Northern Ireland and the drive north
Scotland took the other road. There the law authorises the celebrant, whether a registrar or a religious or belief celebrant, and a ceremony can take place at any indoor or outdoor location the celebrant can reach. That is why beach, loch-side and hilltop weddings are routine north of the border, and why some couples from England make the trip to marry there.
Scotland was also first in the UK with humanist weddings. The first legally recognised humanist wedding there took place on 18 June 2005, and belief ceremonies have been part of Scottish weddings ever since. Northern Ireland followed in 2018, after a Court of Appeal ruling.
Northern Ireland is often lumped in with Scotland, but its civil weddings work much like those in England and Wales. Councils approve venues, and a registrar conducts civil ceremonies there or at a register office. The differences sit around the edges: couples can apply for a one-off venue such as their own home, and a religious or belief ceremony can take place anywhere the officiant agrees to.
In England and Wales, a humanist ceremony can be as personal as you like, but on its own it does not make you married. Couples who want one also need a civil ceremony, at a register office or an approved venue, to be married in law. Others marry abroad, under the rules of the country where the ceremony takes place.
What the Law Commission proposed
The case for change came from the Law Commission, the independent body that reviews the law of England and Wales. The government asked it to look at weddings in December 2014, and it published its final report, Celebrating Marriage: A New Weddings Law, on 19 July 2022. Its verdict on the current rules was blunt: “inconsistent and complicated, inefficient, unfair and needlessly restrictive”.
Its central idea was to regulate the officiant instead of the building. The person conducting the wedding would be responsible for making sure the place is safe and dignified, and the law would stop asking whether the building had been approved. The rest of the report follows from that one move:
- Weddings outdoors, with no building needed: a forest, a beach, a local park.
- Weddings in village halls, community centres and couples’ own homes.
- Civil weddings on UK-registered cruise ships in international waters.
- Religious weddings outside a place of worship, and hymns or prayers within a civil ceremony, as long as it stays identifiably civil.
- Humanists and other non-religious belief groups conducting legal weddings on the same basis as religious groups, if the government chose to allow it.
What the government decided in 2025 and 2026
The government’s answer came three years later. On 2 October 2025 the Ministry of Justice confirmed it would reform weddings law “when parliamentary time allows”, built on the Law Commission’s two central ideas: regulating the officiant instead of the building, and one set of rules for every kind of wedding apart from Anglican ones. It also committed to ending the unequal treatment of humanists that the High Court had identified in 2020.
Humanist couples will get their change as part of the whole package. Ministers already hold a power to allow humanist weddings by order, but in March 2026 the justice minister Baroness Levitt told the House of Lords the government would not use it, because singling out one group would create new inequalities with others.
On 16 July 2026 the Deputy Prime Minister and Justice Secretary, David Lammy, published the detailed plans in a consultation, Tying the Knot: Reforming weddings law in England and Wales. In his foreword he wrote that there is “no reason a wedding taking place on a beach, in a forest, or in a family garden can’t carry the same dignity” as one in a traditional venue. The officiant would carry the legal responsibility, guided by a new “dignity framework” of standards for the place and the ceremony, and an officiant who failed to meet them could lose the right to conduct weddings.
The proposals reach further than the beach. Weddings in private homes would be allowed if the safeguards against forced and sham marriages are strong enough. Weddings on water would open up, from narrowboats and Thames river cruisers to UK-registered cruise ships at sea. A civil ceremony could include individual religious elements, such as a Bible reading or the breaking of a glass, as long as it does not become a full religious service.
The government’s initial view is that independent celebrants should be able to conduct legal weddings too. Notice would move online, followed by an in-person interview, and the rule that civil ceremonies must be open to the public would go. Civil partnerships were left out of this round, with a promise to consider them as the reform progresses.
Where it stood in September 2026
As of September 2026, the law has not changed. The consultation closed on 24 September and the Ministry of Justice is analysing the responses. No bill has been put before Parliament. The King’s Speech of May 2026, which set out the government’s programme for the parliamentary session, did not include one, and there is no date for the new rules.
The next step from there is the government’s formal response to the consultation, setting out its final decisions. After that comes a bill, which ministers say will follow “when parliamentary time allows”, then its passage through both Houses, and then the practical work of setting up the new system, from authorising officiants to moving notice online.
What it means for a wedding under the current law
Until a new law is passed and brought into force, every wedding in England and Wales follows today’s rules. In September 2026 there was no date for that, so plan on the current system: a register office, an approved venue or a registered place of worship, notice given at least 29 days ahead, and two witnesses.
If your heart is set on a clifftop, there are three ways to get close today. You can find an approved venue whose own grounds reach the view. You can hold the legal ceremony at a register office and a celebrant-led ceremony wherever you like. Or you can head to Scotland.
When the reform comes, it will be good news for couples. Humanist couples will be able to marry in line with their beliefs, couples of different faiths will have more room to bring both into one ceremony, and anyone who dreams of their grandmother’s garden or the beach where they met will be able to marry there. Most couples will still want a place built for the day, with a kitchen, a dance floor and a roof for when it rains, and the government’s own plans propose a list of pre-authorised venues for couples without a special spot in mind. Whatever the law settles on, a venue still has to be found.
To see what is approved near you today, search the map by postcode or town, or browse every council area.