George Fox, the founder of the Society of Friends, and Margaret Fell married using a modification of that procedure in 1669.
[citation needed] Two years later, when Fox was in Barbados, he sent out an epistle in which he advocated giving women's meetings the initial responsibility to pass on a couple's intentions when the couple had expressed a desire to be wed. That advice became quite controversial for those who did not want to see women's roles expanded.
In America, some couples choose to marry within the meeting without registering their marriage with the government, a tradition dating back to Quakerism's earliest days.
If a couple later needs to prove that it is married, the Quaker wedding certificate signed by witnesses at the ceremony may be sufficient in some US states.
A few states have statutes that specifically recognize Quaker marriages in which ministers are not officiants, as legal.
The administrative tasks associated with the marriage are completed by a Registering Officer, who is a person specially appointed by the Monthly Meeting in which the couple is to be married.
Often, the certificate is hung prominently in the home of the couple as a reminder of the declarations it made and of the people with whom it shared that moment.
The declarations made by the couple in meetings for worship for the solemnisation of marriage in Britain Yearly Meeting are as follows (words in italics are optional): "In the presence of God (OR In the fear of the Lord and in the presence of this assembly), Friends, I take this my friend NAME to be my spouse*, promising, through divine assistance (OR with God's help), to be unto him/her a loving and faithful spouse*, so long as we both on earth shall live (OR until it shall please the Lord by death to separate us)" * the word "spouse" may be replaced by "wife", "husband" or "partner in marriage".
Quakers and Jews were exempt from the restrictions within the Marriage Act 1949 from the requirements to marry in certain approved locations or at certain times and so they were the only groups who were (theoretically) allowed, for example, to marry outdoors or in the middle of the night (although in practice, Quaker marriages are performed in a place where there is a regular Meeting for Worship held and so they would not usually take place outside).
In the District of Columbia and the states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Illinois, Colorado, and California, self-uniting marriage licenses are available, which require only the signatures of the bride, the groom, and witnesses.
[6] Most, if not all, states provide by statute that a few members of the Meeting, who are duly appointed by name under its normal business procedure, are thereby legally competent to jointly sign and file the marriage license as the "officiants".