Civil marriage as a public ceremony: official acts classification

Abstract

The civil marriage ceremony performed through time in city halls has been considered as a social or familiar act. However, according to the growth of this kind of celebrations in public halls, along with their planning, organization and development by pertinent public authorities, makes necessary reconsidering the question about their ownership, letting the possibility of its transformation from a private to an official act.

In order to give an answer to this point, bounds to official acts were marked through explorative reviews made by experts. Also, the reality of civil marriages in city halls has been analysed from descriptive methods.

The obtained results by classifying official acts delimited that the general official acts were the ones organised by the Crown, the Government and the Administration, which target are commemorations and events in their territorial environments. As for the special official acts, those are the ones organised by the three powers (executive, legislative and judicial), in order to commemorate or celebrate their own acts in the specific sphere affecting their services, competencies and activities.

Under that consideration, the civil wedding ceremony has been analysed as a municipal service. Civil marriages have been determined as private or public acts according to the circumstances.

With the obtained data, we can conclude that civil marriage ceremonies carried out in city halls are catalogued as private acts or as special official acts.