Gretna Green The Story of Gretna Green Weddings

Gretna Green first became popular for weddings after Lord Hardwicke introduced the 1754 Act of Parliament which stated

1) Any marriages performed in a church would have to be recorded in the Parish Records which in turn would have to be signed by
both Bride and Groom.

2) Weddings which were carried out in places or at times which were deemed illegal in the 1604 canons were not legal ceremonies.

3) All weddings should be performed in a church and would be recognised legally while "verbal spousals" which were non-church
ceremonies would not be deemed legal.

4) Bride and Groom must both be 21 or over to marry wihout their parents or guardians consent.

This law was introduced to prevent the thousands of marriages which were taking place illegally around the country, causing an
outcry as these ceremonies were never properly recorded and led to many disputes where landowners daughters had married
against their fathers wishes. To be married in this way all the Bride and Groom had to do was appear before a parson and two
witnesses and declare their wish to be married. Irregular marriages were most commonplace around Fleet prison in London where
there were over 50 marriage houses.

These laws were enforced by secular courts and any clerygmen breaking these laws faced 14 years of transportation. However these
laws only applied to England and as Scottish law has always been different from English and still allowed you to be married at 16,
the result of this was that couples, where either Bride or Groom or both were under the age of 21 they would runaway to Scotland to
be married. With Gretna Green being the most southerly part of the Scotland and England border it is where many of these
runaways arrived.

Over the years many couples would runaway to Gretna Green for their
marriages to take place. The ceremonies were usually perfomed by one of the
village blacksmiths who in those days were at the heart of the comunity and
held in suitable regard. Even today, many of the Ministers refer, in their
services, to the similarity of a blacksmith joining 2 metals over the anvil to the
marriage ceremony joining 2 people as one..

Often the young couples would be chased by at least one pair of angry
parents and legend has it that on occasions the ceremony would be halted
and the young couple hustled into the nearest bed, so that when the angry
father found the couple in bed together he would head home in disgust,
thinking he was too late to prevent the wedding taking place. Once the Father
had gone the couple would then continue with their wedding.

In 1857 Lord Brougham brought in a bill changing the law which meant that a couple must be in residence in the area for a minimum
of 21 days prior to the proposed date, this became known as "the three week cooling-off period". This drastically reduced the number
of marriages in Gretna Green but did not stop the more determined couples who came anyway and found work on farms or other local
businesses for the three week cooling-off period. This state of affairs continued until 1940 when all "irregular marriages " were stopped.
During a thirteen year period before 1940 an anvil priest named Richard Rennison is reputed to have claimed that he performed 5147
Gretna Green weddings.

1977 saw yet another change in law which removed the three week cooling off period as there was no longer a residential qualification.
The act stated that people must give a minimum of 14 days written notice before the date of their wedding. This law allowed couples to
be married wherever they chose but it wasn't until 1994 when Ministers began to perform anvil weddings in Gretna Green (outwith the
church premises) that the tradition of the anvil wedding was reborn.

The latest change in the law occurred in June 2002 whereby Registrars were allowed to perfom Civil ceremonies outwith the Registry
offices, in approved venues. The first such ceremony in Scotland took place at the Mill Forge, Gretna Green on the 6th of August 2002
when Jo Shine and Nick Drummond were married.

Gretna Green has had its fair share of television fame too, from documentaries such as Lovetown to soaps like Eastenders when
Ricky Butcher ran away with his teen bride Sam Mitchell (this was a true Gretna Green wedding as they ran away from her family to
be married, and being the Mitchells who can blame them !) and comedies such as Bread when Joey Boswell and his sweetheart
Roxy were married in secret at Gretna Green, although neither of these weddings were actually filmed in Gretna Green.

The author Jane Austen visited Gretna Green in 1797 and mentioned Gretna Green in her book Pride and Prejudice with the line "I
laugh at the thought of your face when I tell you that I am going to Gretna Green!"

An entry from the journal of Robert Burns from when he stayed in Carlisle in 1790 is as follows "Today I fell in with a strange
adventure when I encountered a young lass of considerable beauty. After a bottle of cider and a brush of caressing, she suggested a
Gretna Green affair, but when I advised her of the existence of my wife, Mrs Burns, she quickly sheered off."

This shows that Gretna Green has been well known for many years for its tradition of weddings from the days of Jane Austen and
Robert Burns up to the present day when there is still mention of running away to Gretna Green in the press and on television.

The phenomenon of Gretna Green Weddings has attracted visitors from all over the world with the World Famous Blacksmith's Shop
consistently in the top 5 of tourist destinations in Scotland.

Brides and Grooms come from all over the world to be married in Gretna Green, here at the Mill we have had Americans, Spaniards,
New Zealanders, Canadians, South Africans, Turks, French and Dutch to name but a few of the nationalities.

In June 1726 Mary Barns married her gardener John Newlson and the happy couple asked
for their wedding to be dated 2 years earlier as Mary was pregnant and they did not want
to displease their families.

On the 12th of August 1729 Abraham Wells and Susannah Hewitt were married. In 1736
Susannah came back on the 28th of April and paid the "priest" half a guinea to destroy
the marriage certificate as her husband had beaten and abused her. The priest however
led Susannah to believe he had destroyed the certificate when he hadn't done so.