It was a Wedding but Not a Marriage

A wedding can be a life-changing promise without being a legal contract, and that difference matters less to love than most people think. I’m Amanda, an officiant for 12 years, and I’m pulling back the curtain on commitment ceremonies: the weddings that look and feel like a traditional wedding day, complete with vows, rings, guests, and celebration, but skip the marriage license and the state paperwork.

We dig into the real reasons couples choose a non-legal wedding or commitment ceremony, from student loan debt and medical bills to alimony clauses, custody concerns, health insurance costs, VA or disability benefits, and the tax surprises that come with “filing jointly.” I also talk about later-in-life partners who have done the legal part before and want to protect assets, while still choosing each other fully. The throughline is simple: skipping legal marriage is not anti-love. It’s intentional love.

Then we get practical. I explain what I can and cannot say as your wedding officiant when there is no license, why language like “union” and “partner” can matter, and how common law marriage rules vary by state. We also tackle the big etiquette question: do you have to tell your guests it’s not legal? Finally, I share planning tips for booking vendors, deciding how public you want to be, and designing a ceremony that reflects your story without over-explaining it.

If this sparks questions or sounds like your path, listen now, then subscribe, share with a friend who’s wedding planning, and leave a review so more couples can find these options.

Transcript

Welcome To The Wedding Wear

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Welcome to the wedding where with officiating by Amanda. The Wedding Wear. It was a wedding, but not a marriage. Welcome back to The Wedding Wear, a podcast where we talk about weddings, marriage, love, and things that don't always fit neatly into a marriage license envelope. My name is Amanda. I am an officiant. I've been doing this for 12 years. And my gosh, the stories I can and do tell. So this one here is talking about the wedding where it was a wedding, but not a marriage. So let me be really clear for anyone who's clutching their pearls and going, wait, what do you mean? There was a ceremony. There was love, there were vows, there were guests, there were flowers and tears and feelings. It was all planned. It was all heartfelt. It was all beautifully, beautifully done. It was a wedding, which you can have. You just can't call it a marriage because legally it wasn't. And honestly, in today's day and age, that distinction matters way, way less than people think. And really the only people whose business it is are the couple and the government, but really just the people. So if you've listened to the podcast for a while, you know that we've talked about weddings that weren't kind of sort of really weddings or marriages or things like that, including the one, the wedding where they told all of the other vendors that it wasn't a wedding to get a cheaper rate. And the wedding where they actually couldn't get married because they were already married to other people. Yep. Yep. That one. That one right there. This episode's a little bit different. This is focusing on commitment ceremonies and wanting to, in all but legalness, be married and being legally able to be married, just choosing not to be married. Commitment ceremonies are intentional, they're meaningful, they are very personal. They just don't involve signing paperwork or filing anything with the state. And I want to say that right up front. A ceremony does not need to be legal in order to be recognized. Just like if a girl's out at a bar and tells a guy, oh, like I have a boyfriend, please don't harass me, please don't flirt with me, leave me alone. She shouldn't have to show proof of said boyfriend for it to be understood and acknowledged. Now, again, there's certain cases and places that, yes, documented proof, that is what's needed. And we'll talk a little bit more about that with this type of wedding ceremony as well. A lot of times we treat marriage as the ultimate finish line. The wedding day is the goal. And then after you say I do, it's you're married. And that title makes the love official. But in truth, there's a lot of reasons that couples choose not to be legally married. And none of them mean that they love each other any less. And I will also say that sometimes this decision of not wanting a legal marriage comes about mere moments before they walk down the aisle. They might already have a marriage license. In fact, I might have shown up assuming I was signing a marriage license, and the couple elect not to give me the marriage license because they aren't sure. They don't know. Maybe there was a big fight a few nights before that I'm not privy to. And they know that divorces are a heck of a lot more expensive once the legal paperwork is filed than what just having this wedding and going through legal steps to get paperwork married later would be. So lots of different factors to consider. But some of the reasons I hear are surrounding debt, student loan debt, medical debt, credit card debt, or other financial implications that could really impact your partner, especially with young couples, one who maybe is doing modest, but not going to be able to saddle or pay off the debt of the other person and the other person who has significant debt. So not entering into a legal marriage means your assets are still separated. And depending on the states you are in, some of it could fall under common law. I'm not even touching that with a 10-foot pole and talk to a lawyer or somebody legal with all of that, but I'm just telling you what I hear in terms of why not have a license, why not have a full marriage, why only do a wedding, commitment ceremony, exchange of vows? Other reasons are custody or alimony concerns. If a partner has been divorced and they are getting financial assistance from their ex, there might be clauses in terms that that financial assistance stops once they legally marry somebody else. Yeah, a little, a little roundabout, but depending on what that other partner, the new spouse has going on in their realm, maybe they wouldn't ever be able to financially contribute the same way that the alimony is. Health insurance and benefits, yeah, it's a huge, huge thing. I know my my husband and I talked a lot about it. We we did get married. Don't worry, everyone listening who knows us, we are legally married. But when we talked about actually combining in on one health insurance, it was going to be very costly for either of us to add a dependent. And it was easier for us to stay separate for medical insurance. And that could be all the same too. If you're getting benefits from the VA, if you are getting benefits from disabilities or other insurances, sometimes there are clauses about the household income. And if you are legally married, how your spouse's income plays into that. Taxes filing jointly isn't always the win that people think that it is. And you can file like married, but filing separate. It doesn't give you the same benefits as truly legally being able to file as single or head of house without having to say, like, oh, actually, but my would-be husband lives with us. Hey, you are not legally married. There would be no paper trail to combine you together. And places do not recognize commitment ceremonies as legal. So go forth with what you will. Retirement benefits or age. A lot of later in life couples who've done a few marriages before are just kind of like, we love each other, but we aren't going through this again. We aren't going through, let's combine all the assets because they know the risk could be that you have to divide all the assets. So they keep their lives as separate people who live together and love each other. They might write wills and other contracts and clauses that spell out this person has a right to a say, this person has a right to a share. But from a marriage and legal spouse standpoint, they don't, they don't have that. So they put it in words in other places. There's also personal philosophy as well. Sometimes people don't want the government involved in their relationship. They don't want judgment. Again, in Pennsylvania, you can't marry if you are first cousins. But there are more and more cases from donor-conceived children who don't know exactly who their families are. And if and when they kind of piece together that the boyfriend they've had since high school shares a little more genetics than they'd want to. You might be better not even going through the steps to get a marriage license because it opens a whole can of worms into questions that aren't at all your fault or your ability. You just want to be with who you love. And that should just be that. We don't need a piece of paper to validate us. This is not anti-love. It's intentional love. And I'd I'd almost say there's more love in it than at times some of the marriages I've been asked to do, where it's very clear that one of the spouses has come from an international country on a fiance visa. They have not known each other long at all. And yet they're getting legally married and kind of thinking love will grow or happen later on. They're just happy for companionship and at times citizenship. This here is very different. This is almost pretty much the exact opposite. There's so much more known love there. You don't have to wait and see if it develops. You just don't want the piece of paper. So commitment ceremony is a ceremony where two people publicly commit themselves to one another. And it doesn't even have to be that public. I've done very, very small ones. But they are doing it without entering into a legally binding marriage. So there's no marriage license. You technically don't even need a me. There is certainly no paperwork to fill out, and there's no courthouse to go to at the start or the end. Everything else, though, you can totally have. You can have the whole entire thing. Anything that you would have dreamed of for your wedding, you can still have. You can have vows, traditional or personal. You can have rings, you can have an entire bridal party. You can have everyone there thinking that you are getting married. No one needs to know, or everyone can know. You can have reception and cake and dancing and champagne. You get to decide. There's only a few things that you just can't kind of have. You know, I can't pronounce that you are legally wed. I can't say that you are. I can say wedding. I can say that you are partners. Saying the word spouse is a little iffy, but again, we we all work husbands and work wives, so we kind of throw that title out altogether. I can say we're here today for the wedding of, not for the marriage of, because you're not getting married. Lots of different, different things that are really just wording elements that I as an officiant can't say because they would give implications or grounds that this is a marriage, paperwork has been signed, and that's not what it is. Kind of a slight legal sidebar. And again, I wholeheartedly recommend that you talk to a legal professional if you are unsure if any of this applies to your state, to your country, to your municipality. Common law marriage. So common law marriage was, and I say was because it is not longer legal in Pennsylvania, where I reside. So common law marriage was a couple who could be considered legally married without any ceremony or marriage license at all, based on things like they lived together, they publicly referred to each other as spouses, they filed taxes together, they shared finances, and there was also a length of time that you were together. Pennsylvania, it used to be seven years. If you lived together for seven years, the state considered you common law married. Some states recognize it, but the rules are different everywhere else. A commitment ceremony, on the other hand, is not legally binding in any state at all. And it does not automatically create a marriage, common law or otherwise. So there could be a time, depending on where you live, that you elect to go with a commitment ceremony because you don't want to be legally married. But if your state still has common law marriage on the books, you might, you might already kind of be married anyway. Lots of different things to look into depending on where you're at. Make sure that you really understand your state's laws and be intentional with language. Does it count if the guests don't know? Hmm, that question. Do we have to tell people it's not legal and we aren't really married? The short answer, nope. You don't have to say a thing. The longer answer is that it is entirely up to you. Some couples have been very open about it. They put it out, you know, come to our commitment. We're celebrating our union and our love for each other. Some have it just mentioned within the ceremony. And the guests understand exactly what they're celebrating then. So there's kind of a nice openness to it. But other people really choose for privacy because they want it to keep that look and feel of a wedding. And people need to celebrate them and the love, not regard, you know, not the paperwork or lack thereof. And the details stay with the couple. I did have a couple who, again, up to probably a week before the wedding, were getting married, had the marriage license on them. However, there was some bigger disputes and disagreements. And rather than call the wedding off or go through fully and get married, they kind of found a middle ground where they were going to go through with the ceremony, they were going to get into counseling afterwards, and they were going to talk it through. But in the case where they might decide it is easier to separate and split up, they now don't have to file a whole bunch of paperwork to get a divorce because they didn't get married. And those were some conversations. Those were definitely some long phone calls that I had with them. If I'm presented with a marriage license, I have to sign it and I have to return it. But if you fail to get a marriage license or you do not present it to me, okay, I'm changing up my script a little bit. I will still go in there and I will still tell everybody that you love each other so much and that you are planning to spend the rest of your lives together. What you choose to do after that is all you. And I also agree, it is a heck of a lot cheaper for that couple specifically, that if after six months of counseling they determine that they do want to go forth and get married, it is a heck of a lot cheaper to go back to the courthouse and reapply for a marriage license, pay 60 bucks, have it in your hot little hand, call me, call anybody efficient-wise to do a sign and go on the license to have it recognized as a legal marriage instead of, you know, filing for annulment or divorce and having to get into more legal straits just because on a day that you wanted to celebrate your love, even when you weren't feeling as much, you handed me a piece of paper to sign. There's no real rule book. You're not deceiving people if you invite them to witness your commitment ceremony and you don't fill them in, that it's not a marriage. I mean, you can certainly have more support if you kind of let people know what's going on, but that's between you and them. They're there to celebrate you, not your filing status. And these ceremonies are often really, really meaningful because you strip away what you're supposed to do. And while we've gotten that way with a lot of weddings where we throw out the entire rule book and we just wing it and go and have fun, I still have to say the three legal lines. There's no by the power vested in me. There's really space held for the partners who've already shared their lives together. We can share more of those life stories. We can really celebrate their love and how they're going to support each other emotionally through the tough times without saying that it's going to also be a 50-50 split with financial support or that all of their debts are going to be cleared. It's just people who choose to love without labels. And the vows that they often have for each other are so incredibly beautiful. I oftentimes with these ceremonies, I don't ask them the traditional kind of vows, but I still ask them, you know, do you swear by the commitments that you've made? Do you promise to love one another? Yada. And if they're doing their own vows, I really do just stick with, do you swear by what you said here today in front of these witnesses and let their words stand on their own accord? I like, but I also get a little hung up sometimes in the language of it all, because there's certain things that like you shouldn't say, like I shouldn't say matrimony, I should say union. I can still say vow, but promise would also be fitting, saying commitment, saying wedding day instead of referring to marriage, saying partner, best friend, love of your life instead of spouse. Or you can keep all of the traditional language and we just skip kind of the legal ending. But there's some more flexibility there that doesn't always hit the couples who are doing commitment ceremonies, that they can have that sort of flexibility with the language. So if you're really thinking on this one and you're like, wow, I didn't realize we could do that, just a couple practical things to think about. Be very clear when you're booking your vendors, especially your efficient, about the legal boundaries that there won't be paperwork for them to sign. Heck, it might even save you some money if there's no paperwork to sign. Understand your state's marriage and common law laws just to make sure that if you don't intend to get married, you aren't, in fact, already somewhat married because of common law. Decide whether you want this to be publicly known or private. Work with your officiant to really design a ceremony that reflects you and your story and if you are choosing to put in why this is the path you're going with, and let go of the idea that it needs to be explained. It really doesn't. Love does not need to defend itself. So at the end of the day, a wedding isn't a contract. It's a moment. It's a moment to celebrate, it's a moment recognizing all the love that you have. The contract is the marriage license. So you can still have a really wonderful and special day without the paperwork. And it can still be incredibly meaningful and heartfelt, even without it. So I know I threw a lot at you and And this was interesting to be talking about weddings that are weddings but not marriages. Are you familiar with this? Are you one of those couples that said, we don't need a license, let's just do this? Because the other side of it too is you can have the license, you can have it signed, and you can choose like not to change your name, you can choose not to merge banking. There's a few things though that the government won't let you not merge, or it's actually more costly if you don't merge them. So always being aware there. If you're planning a ceremony that doesn't fit the mold, or you've already had one and you want to share what that looked like, I would love to hear it. Because around here, I I love weddings. I love the stories, I love the love. Even the ones that aren't legal. They're actually some of my favorite. Thank you so much for listening. And until next time, this has been Amanda. Thank you for listening to The Wedding Wear with Officiating by Amanda. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and found some inspiration or insight for your own special day. This podcast is hosted on Buzz Sprout and can be found on all major platforms. If you haven't already, please subscribe, like, comment, and share to help us reach even more listeners who might laugh a little at the wedding wear. For the links referenced in the show, visit Linktree at OfficiatingBy Amanda. You can also follow the business on Facebook, Weddingwire, and then not to stay up to date on everything going on. If you have a question you'd like me to answer on the podcast, just send an email to the WeddingWare Podcast at gmail.com. And if you're ready to inquire about officiating services for your own big day, you can reach me at officiatingbyamanda at gmail.com. Thank you so much for tuning in, and until next time, this has been Amanda.