Impediments vary between legal jurisdictions, but would normally include a pre-existing marriage that has been neither dissolved nor annulled, a vow of celibacy, lack of consent, or the couple being related within a prohibited degree of kinship.
Before 1983, canon law required banns to be announced, or "asked", in the home parishes of both parties on three Sundays or Holy Days of Obligation before the marriage.
By this law, the banns were required to be read aloud on three Sundays before the wedding ceremony, in the home parish churches of both parties.
Scotland, in particular Gretna Green, the first village over the border from England, was the customary destination, but became less popular after 1856 when Scottish law was amended to require 21 days' residence.
The Isle of Man was briefly popular also, but in 1757 Tynwald, the island's legislature, passed a similar Act, with the additional sanction of pillorying and ear-cropping for clergymen from overseas who married couples without banns.
[5] In 1656 (during the Commonwealth or Protectorate period) the parish register of St Mary le Crypt in Gloucester records banns of marriage as being "published by the Bellman" – the Town Crier.
However, in their notes to the 2012 Measure, the Church of England's legal Office stated "In some places the alternative form, as set out in Common Worship, has been in use for some time.
[6] The 2012 measure gave effect to two changes: The Sunday Service of the Methodists, the first liturgical text of Methodism, contains "the opening rubric of the Prayer Book rite requiring the publication of banns, by which impediments to marriage such as consanguinity and legal betrothal to another could be revealed and investigated."
"[10] Elizabeth Freedman identifies the mid-19th century as the era in which "[g]overnmental regulation of marriage in the United States intensified" and the U.S. "reestablished jurisdiction over marriage by reviving the policing function that banns had once had, developing a series of prenuptial tests that would determine the fitness of the couple to marry..."[12] In the Canadian province of Ontario, the publication of banns "proclaimed openly in an audible voice during divine service" in the church(es) of the betrothed remains a legal alternative to obtaining a marriage licence.
Banns being read once in a church ordinarily attended by both parties to the marriage is also allowed in lieu of a licence in Manitoba.
[15] The government does not issue licences; instead a written notice must be posted at the place of the wedding for 20 days beforehand, and the officiant verifies the eligibility of the intended spouses.
[17] In Finland, a forthcoming marriage was required to be announced in the home parish church of the bride on three consecutive Sundays prior to the wedding.
This requirement ended with the 1988 marriage law Archived 7 October 2015 at the Wayback Machine, but the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland continues to practise the tradition unless the couple request otherwise.
French civil law requires the publication of banns of marriage in the towns where intended spouses are living.