WASHINGTON — In most American cities, a couple’s biggest wedding-week worries are the weather, the seating chart and the uncle with opinions. In Washington, add one more: whether Congress has funded the government.
The reason is a quirk of the District’s semi-federal status. D.C.’s own government stays open when the federal government shuts down, thanks to a provision Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton has written into the District’s appropriations every year since 2015, the D.C. Council explained last fall. But marriage licenses here are issued by the D.C. Superior Court, which is federally funded, and the court’s shutdown plan treats its Marriage Bureau as nonessential. When the money stops, so do the licenses, as Axios reported in the first week of the October 2025 shutdown.
The Council’s answer, then and now, carries one of the better acronyms in the D.C. Code: the Let Our Vows Endure Act, or LOVE Act. A permanent version, Bill 26-441, introduced by at-large Councilmember Christina Henderson, was listed on the consent agenda for a first vote at the Council’s Nov. 10 legislative meeting, alongside a smoke-detector bill and a clemency measure. That is a fitting spot for it: the consent agenda is where the Council groups measures it takes up without separate debate.
What the bill does
The bill would let the mayor issue marriage licenses and authorize temporary officiants, but only during a period when the Clerk of the Superior Court is not issuing licenses because of a federal shutdown, according to the bill summary. The mayor would create a modified license form, number each license with its own prefix so it can’t be confused with a court-issued one, keep copies of every license and certificate, and send them to the court clerk.
None of this is untested. The Council passed an emergency version on Oct. 7, 2025, and it took effect Oct. 9 as D.C. Act 26-156. The act limits the mayor’s authority to periods “when the Clerk of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia is not issuing marriage licenses because of a total or partial federal government shutdown,” and, like every emergency act, could last no more than 90 days. The Council used the same approach in January 2019, during the 35-day shutdown, Axios noted.
According to a published summary of the Judiciary and Public Safety Committee’s Nov. 2 markup, the committee kept the introduced language but changed the deadline for sending signed licenses to the court clerk from five days after issuance to 30 days after the government reopens, a sensible concession to the fact that there is nobody at the clerk’s office to send them to while it is closed.
How it worked last time
During the 2025 shutdown, the mayor’s Office of the Secretary ran the stand-in marriage bureau out of 899 North Capitol Street NE, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., no appointment needed. Licenses were free, could be issued the same day, and went to residents and nonresidents alike, according to the office’s October 2025 FAQ. Couples planning to marry each other without a third party, a D.C. specialty we covered last month, had to apply in person together. The Secretary of the District also offered to perform civil ceremonies on request.
There were a few wrinkles. The office would not accept a mailed-in certificate; signed paperwork had to be carried back to North Capitol Street, even after the shutdown ended. Couples who had already picked up a court-issued license were told to return it to the courthouse’s after-hours drop box, where it would sit until the court reopened. And the office promised that licenses it issued would not expire when the shutdown did, which may be the most romantic sentence ever written in a government FAQ.
Why a permanent fix now
Washington is a marrying town, despite its reputation: the District’s marriage rate is the fourth-highest in the nation, and plenty of those couples book dates a year out without checking the congressional calendar. Emergency and temporary laws must be passed again each time, and an emergency act can’t be put in place until the Council meets, musters a supermajority of nine members and the mayor signs. A permanent law would let the mayor act the morning the court’s Marriage Bureau closes.
The next deadline is not hypothetical. Congress returned this week to a lame-duck session facing a Dec. 11 government funding deadline, which falls squarely in the season of holiday engagements.
After a first vote, the bill still needs a second Council vote, the mayor’s signature and a congressional review period before it becomes law. Until then, the practical advice for a winter wedding is the same as for any Washington plan with federal exposure: get the paperwork early, and keep an eye on the floor schedule.
Leave a Reply