Leading Celebrant Begs Andy Burnham ‘Don’t Let Marriage Reform Die!’

A rites-of-passage expert, who has spent three decades leading weddings and ceremonies for the couples and families that the system so often overlooks, has written a letter to the new Prime Minister,  following the launch of the government’s long-awaited public consultation into reforming England and Wales’ centuries-old marriage law, just days before the new PM entered office.

Stuart Morris, 58, from Malham, North Yorkshire, founder of The International College of Professional Celebrants (ICPC), the world’s largest trainer of wedding and funeral celebrants, joined David Lammy aboard a boat on 16 July and led a Q&A with him, as they launched the biggest overhaul of UK marriage law in almost 200 years. He is now making it his mission that this proposed legislation makes it into reality.

He writes:-

Dear Mr Burnham,

Congratulations on your appointment and the moves you have already made. I’m writing because the government you are inheriting has just launched the biggest reform of marriage law in over a century.

I have spent thirty years leading funerals, weddings and ceremonies for people the system too often overlooks. Last week I was involved in the launch of the Ministry of Justice’s public consultation into how and by whom couples in England and Wales can legally be married. It has taken over a decade to get here. The Law Commission first looked at this in 2014. It reported in 2022. It was ignored for three years. Now, finally, change is on the table, just as the government that started it was preparing to hand over to you.

Here is the problem in one sentence: I can currently take a British couple to Las Vegas and marry them there, and the UK will recognise it. I cannot legally marry them myself in a barn in Yorkshire, or indeed in their own  garden, or a favourite landmark, no matter how much they want me to. Only registrars and ministers of certain recognised religions can conduct a legally binding wedding here, and that leaves real people with very little choice. Gay couples. Mixed faith couples. Anyone whose family or faith leaders cannot or will not be part of their day. They are left with a ten minute slot at the local register office, often rationed to one a month, with a registrar they didn’t choose and never met.

This is not a fringe issue. The UK wedding industry is worth £14.7 billion and employs over 400,000 people directly, and every one of those weddings depends on a law that has barely changed since large parts of it were written a thousand years ago. It shows too in a gap most people never see: registrars have no formal training requirement beyond shadowing an experienced colleague, yet the celebrants I train complete a week of in-person study and up to eighteen months towards a nationally recognised qualification. Only one of us is legally allowed to marry the couple in front of us.

You have spent your career voting for people’s right to marry who they love and live how they choose. You backed equal marriage. You have stood up for the rights of people the system was not built for. This reform is a continuation of that same principle, not for celebrants, but for every couple who deserves a ceremony that actually reflects who they are.

I am not asking you for anything new. I am asking you to finish something that is already under way, in a week when it would be the easiest thing in the world to let it quietly disappear in the handover between governments. Consultations launched by outgoing administrations do not always survive the arrival of new ones. This one should. It was part of Labour’s own manifesto commitment, it has cross party support in principle, and it affects couples in every constituency in the country, including the ones you represented as Mayor of Greater Manchester.

So my ask is simple – that you commit to seeing this consultation through to real reform. Not because celebrants asked you to, but because hundreds of thousands of couples are waiting for the choice they have been denied for far too long.

Yours sincerely,

Stuart Morris

Founder, The International College of Professional Celebrants

Executive Board Member, Wedding Celebrancy Commission