Why can't you get married after 6pm?

[tealeaves]

"Within England and Wales, the wedding laws dictate that a ceremony must take place between the hours of 8am and 6pm, the only exceptions being for Jewish and Quaker ceremonies. Within Scotland, no such time-of-day restrictions are in place and couples are free to marry at any time of day". As quoted from here: http://www.weddingsday.co.uk/wedding-laws/

Can anyone explain the reasoning behind this rule, and how/why it came to be the case? Just to give registrars and ministers the evening off? As I understand it marriages can be registered up until 5.59pm but not after the 6pm cut-off point, which seems a little outdated to me. Just pondering! Any ideas?

[boxtops]

The registrar goes home for tea.

[mollykins]

How perculiar and interesting although i'm sorry to say I haven't an answer.

[boxtops]

An answer to this on Yahoo Questions suggests because if you wanted to get married at 3am, anyone wanting to make a just cause or impediment statement might still be in bed.....

[mollykins]

That sounds a bit silly, if they wanted to make sure you wouldn't get married because they new of a reason why you couldn't, they'd make the effort to go there, it wouldn't be much different to saying you can't married 100 miles away from everyone you know(even though that's impossible), incase they know of an inpediment but over 100 miles is too far for them to travel!

[Barmaid]

That's interesting Eddie and a great answer!

However...... I have a baptismal record of twin girls in the 1780s where it is noted that they were baptised in church just after midnight (I suspect because they were both very poorly and died 2 and 5 days later).

[boxtops]

Good explanation eddie, makes sense.