Self-uniting marriage license

PA marriage licenses vary from county to county. You need to speak to the country clerk in your county and see what they say you need to make your marriage legal.

Yep, I think Pennsylvania is one of only two states to allow this (the other one being Colorado). If you have trouble, there is some advice on dealing with it here:

https://www.mystayathomeadventures.com/how-to-obtain-a-self-uniting-marriage-license

@Munchkin9218, they don't have the right to deny her the self-uniting license, in any county.

I planned to have a friend officiate the wedding but I just read an article about this so I was curious. How soon should I seriously start looking into this? Is obtaining a license a fairly "quick" process?

Your wedding is a year away, you get the license within a month of the wedding because they expire.

I got mine Friday to marry in 11 days

@2ndbride - I never said they would deny it just that the best way for her to get the most correct information is to contact the county clerk directly and find out the rules for her county. Also that information isn't from an official state website so you cannot guarantee it's validity.

OP - the best person to confirm this for you is the county clerk in the county you are getting married in.

Michelle, check the link I gave you. It has advice on timing, and what to say and not say.

I got married in Montgomery County PA. They told me at the clerks office (Orphans Court) that we couldn't be married by a friend who was ordained online. They said we must be married by someone who has an established following and a known leader.

Pretty bummed, being strict atheists. We found an officiant who had a basically non religious "church" we signed up for for just the day of our wedding. We are still salty about it because we wanted to have religion completely out of our wedding but we can't change the laws...

@2dbride I read the article. I literally just learned about this an hour ago. It's amazing, but not surprising, that people have a difficult time obtaining one of these licenses.

@MrsBdeG agreed. Now I feel like I should contact our county immediately because the plan was to have our friend ordained. I don't want to waste his time if we can't do that. We live in DELCO. That would really suck.

@Michelle - your ceremony and officiant is not something you want to mess around with. It and it's legality are he most important part of the day. I would definitely check in with your county soon just to be aware.

I'm also a PA bride but we're having our wedding in NJ

We were tempted to get "pre-married" in MA (where we live) because we were so angry. Our officiant allowed us to have a completely secular ceremony so that helped change our minds.

I'm not sure about Delaware county but good luck!

PA is weird. And honestly, not the easiest place to get an answer from about, well, just about anything.

Yes I heard about this over the summer. One of my brother's friends did this for his wedding in PA. My brother was one of the witnesses and he acted as like the emcee for the ceremony to explain that the bride and groom were essentially their own officiants. I found it fascinating! I only heard about it from him so I don't know any specifics about how the license worked though.

@Munchkin9218 Understood. Our license is the one thing I'm most anxious about.

My boss just did it. I can only speak for Philly. It's $100 vs $90 for a regular license, and you just need two witnesses. She did it at a restaurant and had her server and a couple next to them sign it. You should still ask the county office though.

DH and I were married under a PA self-uniting license in September. Here's some information, based on research and personal experience, that I posted as a response to another person's questions:

Technically, the self-uniting license is for those who are members of a denomination where there is no clergy, such as the Quakers or Ba’hai. However, since the issuance of a marriage license is a government function, county clerks are not permitted to ask questions about a couple’s faith when they apply for the license (separation of church and state right there). A few years back, an atheist couple out in western PA (@MrsMPhil, I believe this was actually in Allegheny County) were denied a self-uniting license; the ACLU sued on their behalf, and won. We live in eastern PA, and there are a fair number of Quaker meetings, so the county clerk offices in this area generally issue self-uniting licenses without any questions, as long as the couple lets them know upon making the application, so they can prepare the right paperwork. I've heard anecdotal evidence for Philadelphia, Montgomery, Berks, Bucks, and Chester counties; I live in Northampton county and didn't have a problem. Some counties charge a few extra dollars (ours did not). The only difference was that instead of an officiant’s signature, we needed two witnesses (usually our county does not require witnesses, just the officiant). Our marriage certificate looks just like any other in PA, except for a small box at the bottom that Is ticked for a self-uniting marriage. Oh, and the clerk was required to notify us that while our marriage was legal at the time we were married, we should stay up to date on the laws in case something changed that would invalidate the marriage. Since this is a law that's been on the books since the 1700's, I think we'll probably be OK, but we'll for sure keep an eye on things. I'm sure they're required to say the same disclaimer to same-sex couples as well.

As for our ceremony, we wrote it ourselves, and had a good friend act as the “emcee.” He said some introductory words, then I said some words to H, then he said some words to me. We involved friends and family in our vows; we had 5 people stand and ask us “Do you promise XYZ?” or “Will you XYZ?” where XYZ was something we were promising to each other or our marriage. We replied “We do!” or “We will!” as appropriate. We exchanged rings, then the emcee said a few concluding words before we macked out a bit and everyone cheered . Honestly, if you weren’t paying attention, you would have missed that instead of “I now pronounce you husband and wife,” the emcee said “You have declared yourselves to be married to each other.”

Best of luck! If you have any questions, definitely call or go visit your county clerk. Oh, and you should know that PA licenses are good in any county; if the clerk in your county gives you a problem, you can go somewhere else.

ETA: I just read the article upstream, and I think the fine distinction here is that if you want someone other than a clergy, judge, or professional officiant to marry you (i.e., a friend or family member who got married on the internet), then you CANNOT use a self-uniting license. It's right there on the label: SELF-uniting. Our "emcee" was not ordained; he had no superpowers to marry us, and we declared ourselves married to each other. You can't have it both ways.

@Lovecat thanks for your input. I would be anxious about laws changing so I’ll probably stick with an ordained friend if I’m allowed one.

Ooh, we’re probably going to do this! I’m a Quaker (my fiancé is not) and it is incomprehensible to me that this isn’t an option everywhere. I think it should be an option not only for Friends, but for anyone who doesn’t want to be married by someone else, for whatever reason. Unfortunately our venue is in Virginia, which requires a minister (no online ordainments) or a state resident to be a one-time civil celebrant. While we’re not having a Quaker ceremony, hiring an officiant would be going a little too far for me. We’d like my aunt to “officiate”/emcee/lead the ceremony, but she doesn’t live in Virginia. So we will either obtain and sign a self-uniting license in DC (where we actually live) the day before, or we will have a family member that lives in Virginia be our civil celebrant for license-signing purposes.

@Lovecat thank you for all of the information. This was actually the main reason I checked into any of these forums for the first time today. We are starting this process and were a little confused by it. I am actually also in Pittsburgh @MrsMPhil and getting married the day before you and two days before you @Michelle

I've just started looking into this as a possible solution to our ceremony - and this is all GREAT information!!! My fiance and I were just going to have a friend get ordained online to perform the ceremony. I didn't want to have a judge do it, because I wanted it to be more personal - but what's more personal than doing it yourselves! Does anyone know of any experience with this in Lancaster county?