Talk:Ceremonial marriage

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This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Nytoussaint.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 17:07, 16 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Proposing Deletion

I already proposed deleting this, as the main article on Marriage fully addresses it. Unlike Common-law marriage, which is a special case of marriage with fairly complex rules, ceremonial marriage is close enough to the "default" case that it should not require its own page. I'm not seeing sufficient unique information to warrant a separate page. Can you explain why you think this page is worth keeping? ShadowRangerRIT (talk) 19:26, 6 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Academics divide marriage into ceremonial and common-law (and also into others). The subject of ceremonial marriage is discussed widely: [1]. I don't think it is identical to marriage, which is a broader term. Even through in modern Western society "marriage" often equals "ceremonial marriage", this is and has not always been the case, thus a distinction and a definition of ceremonial marriage should be helpful. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 01:50, 7 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not disputing that the two are separate. However, if you note, the cases in which "ceremonial marriage" is used in your search largely fall into two categories:

1. As an explicit differentiator from common-law marriage

2. In a legal context, where excessive precision is the rule

In the grand tradition of many arguments, I'll use a car analogy:

Wikipedia has an article on cars (Automobile). The default type of car is powered by gasoline. The gasoline powered car does not have its own article (though there are articles on petroleum itself). Special cases of the car (e.g. electric) have their own article, because they are sufficiently different to warrant one. In cases where the car is powered by something close enough to gas, the article simply describes the engine, since the car itself is the same (e.g. diesel). Similarly, the default case for marriage is ceremonial; common-law is a special case. If anything, Ceremonial marriage (like diesel engines) should simply redirect to wedding, perhaps to the subsection on common elements, which has a detailed treatment of the wedding customs of various cultures. ShadowRangerRIT (talk) 13:31, 7 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

See, there is a common misconception that wedding is an obligatory part of a ceremonial marriage. It is a common practice in the Western culture, but it is not always the case, and even more so if we go outside the Western culture; hence a redirect would be misleading - like redirecting electric car or gocart to car, or perhaps a better analogy would be redirecting automobile to wheels... :) If we cannot reach a consensus on this, I'd suggest an AFD, which tends to attract more people than 3O or RFC, in my experience. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 16:27, 7 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Bibliography:

Cornell Law School. "CFR 404.725 - Evidence of a Valid Ceremonial Marriage." Legal Information Institute. Cornell Law School, n.d. Web. 23 Feb. 2016. Kalmijn, Matthijs. "OpenStax CNX." OpenStax CNX. N.p., 29 June 2015. Web. 23 Feb. 2016. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nytoussaint (talk • contribs) 04:06, 24 February 2016 (UTC) Nytoussaint (talk) 21:17, 24 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]