The registrar who officiated the ceremony did not include a legally mandated marriage declaration
The District Court of Overijssel has voided a couple’s marriage because a legally mandated declaration was not included in the vows, which were generated by ChatGPT.
Per statements published by the NL Times, the couple asked a friend to officiate their wedding as an eendagsbabs – a one-day civil registrar. The friend sought to lighten up the ceremony with help from artificial intelligence, generating a speech that included lines such as “[Man], do you promise that today, tomorrow, and all the days to come, you will stand by [woman]? To laugh together, grow together, and love each other—whatever life brings?” and “[Woman], do you choose [man] again today? To keep supporting each other, to keep teasing each other, to keep holding on—even when life gets tough?”
The vows closed with “Then I declare you hereby: Not only husband and wife, but above all, a team, a quirky couple, each other’s love, and each other’s home,” as well as a declaration that the couple was officially husband and wife.
However, under Dutch law a couple must declare their acceptance of each other as spouses and to “do their duty to one another as required by their wedded state.” After the issue was raised by the local council, the Oost-Nederland district public prosecutor sought an order from the court to remove the couple’s marriage certificate on the grounds that without this declaration, no marriage had taken place.
The prosecutor’s call was backed by the civil registrar of Zwolle.
While the couple acknowledged that their vows did not include the legally required declaration, they pointed out that an official municipal registrar from Zwolle had attended the ceremony and did not flag the omission. They said they believed the ceremony had been performed properly and requested the court to either permit them to retain or administratively recognize April 19, 2025 as their wedding date, as they had married on that day for reasons of personal significance.
The court shot down the request.
“The court understands that the marriage date recorded in the certificate is important to the man and the woman but cannot disregard what is laid down in the law,” the court said in a statement published by the NL Times.
The marriage had been registered last year in the civil registry and in the Basic Registration of Persons.
