Wedding fixture for soccer fans

Football fans will be able to get married on the pitch under new rules allowing civil weddings to be conducted outside, it emerged today.

The old law governing civil nuptials states that they must take place in a register office or "approved premises" such as hotels or stately homes, effectively ruling out open spaces and marquees.

But reforms to be unveiled in a White Paper today, would allow register office officials to marry couples wherever they want, be it in the middle of Oxford Street or on a windswept hilltop.

Other venues might include the basket of a hot-air balloon or a bridge over the M25.

However, some venues may still be unacceptable.

The person conducting the wedding is responsible for making sure the venue is safe, and that might rule out options such as bungee jumping or ceremonies on cliff ledges.

The new rules would be the biggest change to civil wedding law since 1837 and make the situation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland more akin to that in Scotland, where couples already have more freedom to choose where they marry.

The reforms outlined in the White Paper have been drawn up by government ministers and Registrar General Len Cook, the head of the registration service and the civil wedding system.

Other changes to registration laws will affect the whole system under which births, marriages and deaths are registered, with the possibility that old, written registers are discarded in favour of computer records.

The changes are based on suggestions from the former Home Secretary Jack Straw in his Green Paper on the future of the family in 1998, which suggested registrars could hold civil baby-naming ceremonies and take on more duties concerned with boosting family life.

As a result of the reforms, to be considered in the House of Commons today, the trend for increasing numbers of civil marriages against decreasing church weddings is expected to continue.

The number of weddings in nonconventional "approved premises" has risen to more than 22,000 a year, while the number of weddings in the Church of England has fallen by 40 per cent over the last 10 years to 70,000 - making up a quarter of all weddings.

The Church of England may also relax the rule that requires couples to marry only in their local parish church, and that which demands the reading of banns three weeks before a wedding.

Transsexuals win right to marry