§ 186. The Wedding

The wedding of a marriage, when no marital impediment exists and all the prescribed preconditions have been fulfilled, must be performed publicly, before witnesses, and according to the established church rite. This is required by the very nature of marriage, as the foundation of social life in the world and as a “great” New Testament mystery. The canons decisively condemn secret marriage (λαθρογαμία, matrimonium clandestinum), and regard such a marriage as though it had not been contracted at all;[1] and a priest who permits himself to perform a secret wedding is subjected to the strictest penalties.[2] In connection with these church ordinances concerning secret marriages, the laws of the Byzantine emperors likewise condemn them—laws which were received into the canonical collections of the Orthodox Church and became common law of the Church.[3]

According to the prescriptions of that law, together with the corresponding church legal prescriptions of the following centuries, the place where the wedding is regularly to be performed is the church—namely the parish church to which the young couple belong.[4] Only in exceptional cases may it be permitted that the wedding be performed outside the church as well.[5] If the bridegroom is of one parish and the bride of another, the wedding is generally performed in the church of the parish to which the bride belongs.[6]

As to the time of day at which the wedding may be performed, this is before noon, namely after the liturgy, or in case of need between matins and the liturgy; but after the midday meal, or in the evening, “да не дерзнетъ никакоже іерей подъ правильною казнію, и подъ грѣхомъ смертнымъ, никогоже вѣнчати” [“let a priest by no means dare, under canonical penalty and under mortal sin, to marry anyone”], the Krmčija ordains.[7]

For the validity of a marriage, witnesses, or sponsors, before whom the young couple are to declare their free will and consent to marriage, are indispensably necessary at the wedding. The number of witnesses at a wedding is regulated in church legislation by that passage of Holy Scripture which establishes when every dispute is decided;[8] and in accordance with that fundamental canonical ordinance, that the testimony of one alone does not hold,[9] the basic canonical collection of the Orthodox Church ordains that there must be at least two witnesses present at a wedding.[10] In connection with this, civil legislation prescribes the same.[11] As to their qualities, the witnesses at a wedding must be of age and possess all those qualities which are generally required of witnesses at any public contract.[12] Women are excluded from the right to bear witness at a wedding.[13]

The right to perform the wedding belongs to the parish priest, and, with his authorization, to another priest as well.[14] It must be performed according to the prescriptions of the Trebnik [ritual book], in which there is a separate order for those marrying for the first time, and a separate one for those entering a second marriage. It is permitted to depart from certain church rites at the wedding only when some danger prevents the performance of the rite prescribed by the typikon, and in such a case it suffices that the declaration of consent to marriage be heard from the young couple and that the priest pronounce the corresponding formula of the marriage sacrament, and the marriage is then already considered lawfully existing. Outside of this church wedding of marriage, the Orthodox Church does not consider any other form of marriage lawful, even though all the preconditions of marriage be observed and no marital impediment be present; accordingly she does not recognize any church-legal significance whatsoever in, among other things, the so-called civil marriage, which has been introduced by state legislation in some regions (§ 205).

When the wedding has been performed, the competent parish priest enters this into the register of marriages of the parish concerned, in the prescribed manner, and, when needed, issues from that register the corresponding extract or certificate of a properly performed marriage, which extract constitutes a public instrument.[15]

III. IMPEDIMENTS TO MARRIAGE.