PA Self Uniting Marriage- filling out the form

What is a self-uniting marriage? This is a new concept for me.

KD, in PA a couple can essentially marry themselves, meaning no officiant is needed. The license is just $10 more but I'm not aware of how it differs from a regular license. Tom, can you take the form back to the clerk possibly or go to another office and ask.if it was filled out correctly?

Interesting. Thanks for explaining.

You can do this in Colorado, too. No officiant or witnesses needed. I didn't think it was a separate license though. Maybe it is...I've never actually seen it done here!

I don't know much about this, but I read that depending on which county you go to, the courts are more accepting. If you think you filled it out wrong I would just call the court. They are supposed to guide you, sorry you had that experience. I found an article about it on another site, maybe it will help you. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://boards.weddingbee.com/topic/self-uniting-marriage-license-pa/&ved=0CEUQFjAIahUKEwj-iJu8oJzHAhWJK4gKHYUwCtU&usg=AFQjCNGIkADZYB0WaZhXpuAGLBjMN6hCsA&sig2=EC1jm4HiFgEoTS5-BnIdeQ

Just make sure you do your ceremony in the county where you got the license and that you have 2 witnesses present so they can sign the certificate stating they witnessed it.

Thanks so much for all of the responses. The County is not very helpful, but I'm going to contact another county to see if someone can shed a little more light on this. Nancy- I'm a little concerned about your comment because our ceremony is in a different county than the one that issued the self-uniting license. I suppose we could always do a simple ceremony at home the day before, but we were hoping that it could all happen during our ceremony. I know that a regular marriage license is good for any PA county- I never saw anything to say that a SU one was any different. I'll ask about that too.

I believe all you have to do is make sure you sign it in front of two witnesses.

I used to live in PA and looked into getting married there. It looks like only some counties issue self-uniting marriage licenses and not all the counties recognize them. I found this article from several years ago. http://articles.philly.com/2009-03-18/living/25278069_1_marriage-licenses-marriage-license-couples

The counties have different rules about whether they recognize self-uniting marriages, and you wouldn't necessarily know if your marriage is legal or not until it was challenged, and then it's too late to fix. Personally, I wouldn't be comfortable with that, but if you still want to do this, I would really recommend hiring a lawyer in your county to make sure that your marriage would be accepted.

Tom: You're right, the general rule is that you can get a marriage license in one county of Pennsylvania and use it in any other county. The problem is that some court clerks take the position that self-uniting marriage licenses are valid only if the parties are Quakers or Ba'hai. The ACLU filed lawsuits challenging this view in Allegheny, Philadelphia, Bucks, and Montgomery Counties and prevailed in every instance. However, it appears that some counties (perhaps Delaware County?) may still be taking the position that self-uniting marriages are only available to members of those faiths. So to avoid any question, you may want to make sure that you both get your license, and get married, in a county that does not impose religious restrictions on self-uniting marriages.

I am also doing a self uniting marriage. I heard some counties are more helpful than others. I went in and the lady practically filled out the form for me. She asked all the questions and printed out my certificate. Chester county is one of the easiest counties to get it in apparently. I was in and out in 10 minutes.

ETA: If they ask if you are Quaker, go to a different county. I heard that's the tell-tale sign that you are going to have problems.