Do the Amish Get Marriage Licenses? Yes, the Same as Other Couples

Yes. Amish couples get a marriage license before the wedding, like other couples. Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana, where most Amish live, make no exception for them, and Indiana’s marriage law has a clause written for Amish applicants. The wedding is a church service led by an Amish bishop, which Pennsylvania and Ohio law accept as the legal ceremony.

Do the Amish need a marriage license?

Almost 60 percent of the Amish in North America live in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Indiana, according to the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College, and all three states require a license without an exception for any religious group. Pennsylvania’s general rule, which covers the Amish of Lancaster County, reads: “No person shall be joined in marriage in this Commonwealth until a marriage license has been obtained.” In Ohio both partners must appear in person at the probate court of the county where one of them lives and give their names, ages, birthplaces, occupations and parents’ names. None of these states lets an Amish couple marry without one.

An applicant does not need a driver’s license. Ohio accepts a birth record or a baptismal record as proof of age, along with a passport and other government papers, so someone who has never driven a car can still apply.

Do the Amish swear an oath for a marriage license?

No. The Amish do not swear oaths at all, and that matters when they apply for a license. They take the rule from the Sermon on the Mount: “Swear not at all,” Jesus says, and “let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil” (Matthew 5:34, 37). The letter of James repeats it: “But above all things, my brethren, swear not, neither by heaven, neither by the earth, neither by any other oath: but let your yea be yea; and your nay, nay” (James 5:12). The Dordrecht Confession of 1632, which Amish candidates study before baptism, concludes from these verses that “all oaths, high and low, are forbidden,” and that a plain yes or no must be kept as faithfully as a sworn promise.

Indiana wrote that conviction into its marriage law. Applicants normally verify the application under oath or affirmation and sign a statement that they have received information on sexually transmitted diseases. A person who objects on religious grounds does not have to do either, and the clerk notes the objection on the application. The same section then adds a safeguard: “before the clerk of the circuit court may issue a marriage license to a member of the Old Amish Mennonite church, the bishop of that member must sign a statement that the information in the application is true.”

Who performs an Amish wedding?

A bishop of the church. The Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia recorded in 1957 that among the Old Order Amish “only bishops may perform a marriage ceremony,” while other Mennonite groups had begun to let ordinary ministers officiate. State law recognizes the church’s own ceremony. Pennsylvania allows any religious society to marry a couple when at least one partner is a member, “according to the rules and customs” of that society, and Ohio lets “any religious society in conformity with the rules of its church” join a couple in marriage. In those states an Amish couple married by their bishop is married in the eyes of the law.

What happens at an Amish wedding?

The couple keeps the engagement quiet until it is “published,” or announced, in church, ten days before the wedding in small settlements and sometimes much earlier in more progressive ones. Karen Johnson-Weiner, an anthropologist who studied Amish weddings, told LancasterOnline in 2016 that the Lancaster County season traditionally ran from late October to the end of December, after the harvest, but that more than a third of the modern weddings she found took place in May and June. Most are held on a Tuesday or a Thursday, in a family home that may get an addition or enclosed porches to hold the guests, who in Lancaster County can number 500 or more.

The vows come at the end of a long morning worship service. The bishop preaches from the Old Testament and from the Book of Tobit, whose seventh chapter tells of the marriage of Tobias and Sarah. While the congregation sings, the couple meets privately with the minister for advice and a blessing. Then each promises to care for the other as a Christian spouse and to stay faithful until death separates them, a vow the church holds to strictly, since it forbids divorce. There is no exchange of rings, because Amish married couples do not wear wedding rings or other jewelry. The day continues with a noon meal, hymn singing between meals and an evening meal.

Related reading

• Can the Amish get divorced?
• How to tell if an Amish or Mennonite woman is married
• Do the Amish pay taxes?
• Do the Amish need building permits?